CHAPTER 13: Photodegradation of Drugs/Illicit Drugs in Water

Licit and illicit drugs, once discharged into the environment, can follow different transformation routes. Direct or sensitized phototransformations in natural aquatic media are important environmental depletion mechanisms for drugs. Light can promote the complete degradation of the molecule, but in some could promote the formation of transformation products that are more toxic and/or harmful than the parent compounds. In this chapter, we focus on the photoinduced processes, with particular emphasis on the drug’s phototransformation.