Pharmaceuticals have been considered as emerging contami-nants in the aquatic environment and have elicited global concern
because of their ubiquitous occurrence (Ternes, 1998; Kümmerer,
2001). Since there are no treatment processes specifically
designed for pharmaceutical removal in wastewater treatment
plants (WWTPs), elimination of these compounds is not usually
efficient, and therefore many of them have been commonly
detected in WWTP effluents and surface waters (Jones et al., 2005;
Stumpf et al., 1999)