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It has been known today that the increase in medicine consumption has been causing certain en­vironmental and economic problems. To solve these problems, it is useful to know the amount of waste medicine generation and the volunteensm of users in removing waste medicines. In this study, habits of people living in Istanbul relating to the use of medicine and pharmaceutical waste generation and their willingness to the efforts aiming reducing pharmaceutical waste, which might accordingly be generated, as soon as it has emerged. As a result of the survey, drug usage was determined to be 6.14 boxes per year per person, while unused drugs were found to be very high at an annual aver­age of 5.40 boxes. 60% of unused medicines were discarded while 24% of these were stored at home and only 7.7% were returned to pharmacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigated the pretreatment of real paracetamol (PCT) wastewater of a pharmaceutical industry by Fenton process. At the best experimental conditions (COD/H2O2 = 1/1, Fe+2/H2O2 = 1/70, settling method:centrifuging, pH 6 at settling step), 92.7, 92.7, 95.5, 99.1, 99.9 and 99.4% of chemical oxygen demand (COD), total organic carbon (TOC), 5-day biological oxygen demand (BOD5), PCT, para-amino phenol (PAP) and aniline were removed, respectively. Changes in the concentrations of these parameters were also investigated for both oxidation and settling steps of Fenton process. It was found that COD and TOC were removed at the settling step (precipitation) whereas PCT, PAP and aniline were removed at the oxidation step. Mass balance calculations were also studied to show the mass distributions of COD in different phases (gas + foam, effluent and sludge). Fenton process was found as an effective method for the pretreatment of real PCT wastewater for discharging in a determined collective treatment plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]