Particle-water interactions of platinum-based anticancer drugs in river water and estuarine water

The cytotoxic, platinum-based anticancer drugs, cisplatin, carboplatin and oxaliplatin, enter the aquatic environment largely in municipal wastes via excretion from outpatients undergoing chemotherapy. The environmental behaviour, effects and fate of these drugs are, however, unknown. In this study, the adsorption of the drugs to untreated and chemically modified (oxide-free and organic-free) sediment was examined in both river water and low salinity (S = 3.2) estuarine water in order to determine the nature and extent of their interactions with suspended particles. In all cases, adsorption isotherms were linear, and the slopes of the relationships, or distribution coefficients (KDs), ranged from about 102 to 103 ml g−1. Overall, adsorption decreased in the order: cisplatin > carboplatin > oxaliplatin; in river water and: cisplatin > carboplatin, oxaliplatin; in estuarine water. There was no clear dependence of adsorption on sediment treatment but, for all sediment types, both cisplatin and carboplatin adsorption was greater in river water than in estuarine water. Qualitatively, these observations are consistent with the rates of formation of reactive, aquated degradation products and the dependencies of these rates on aqueous chloride concentration. We predict that during transport through an estuarine turbidity maximum (of suspended sediment concentration = 1 g L−1), up to about 45% of cisplatin and 35% of carboplatin are filtered out from the aqueous phase but that no more than 7% of oxaliplatin is retained.