Environmental profiling of endocrine disrupting chemicals in ground water sources: an African perspective

Abstract

Emerging evidence substantiates that African groundwater is contaminated by a mixture of endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs). Groundwater pollution due to EDCs is a serious public health concern, particularly in regions with limited water resource management. To amplify this growing concern, the number of studies on EDCs in groundwater is significantly less than that on surface or wastewater discharge (influent and effluent). A systematic search of the major indexed databases was employed in extracting relevant literature for this study. The review discussed the state of the art of EDCs in African groundwater regarding their occurrence, sources, environmental fate, environmental health, and efficacy of predominant treatment technologies like adsorption and photocatalysis, as well as their drawbacks. Our analysis of the dataset covering multiple countries and years reveals frequent detections of pesticides, phenolics, steroid hormones, parabens, and phthalates. In many cases, detected concentrations in groundwater systems exceed international safety benchmarks up to mg L⁻¹ in some locations. These exceedances, along with detections of unregulated or banned EDCs such as bisphenol A and some organochlorine pesticides, may imply potential human and ecological risks. Additionally, the data reveals spatial patterns: shallow urban wells and low-cost rural areas tend to have higher contamination, reflecting local sanitation and land-use influences. This study also reveals the widespread contamination of EDCs in the African groundwater systems and the dearth of data in sustainable treatment plans. Consequently, there is a need to navigate research focus on both the environmental profiling and treatment/remediation in this pivotal source of drinking water supply on the continent.