Transformation Products of Pharmaceuticals in the Environment: Formation and Analysis

Identification of transformation products and elucidation of degradation pathways of pharmaceuticals in the environment is a challenging task due to the numerous compounds, their low concentrations, and complexity of the environmental matrices. This manuscript summarizes present knowledge about main degradation routes of pharmaceuticals in the environment and review published methods and approaches for their determination in environmental samples, with a special emphasis on the mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance techniques.