The progress of medical science and the continuous formulation of more efficient pharmaceutical drugs have helped to reduce the impact of many pathologies, leading to increased life expectancy, better disease prevention, and a general improvement of health quality.
This remarkable worldwide increase of medicines consumption has also been paralleled by the ubiquitous occurrence of these compounds in natural ecosystems. Specifically designed to be biologically reactive at very low concentrations, active ingredients have the potential to interfere with biochemical and physiological processes in aquatic species, with virtually unknown long-term effects on marine ecosystems.