Detoxification of Endocrine Disruptors in Water Using Visible-Light-Active Nanostructures: A Review

The scarcity of pure water has become a global and major concern because of rapid industrialization in modern and exponentially populated civilization. No life can exist without water, and contamination-free water for the whole ecosystem is a primary demand. Therefore, the enhanced rate of water contamination and the infliction of living beings are considered to be challenging issues. It attracts great attention in the scientific community when water pollution by multifarious endocrine disruptors (EDs) such as plasticizers, herbicides, insecticides, pharmaceutical and personal care products, and food additives and sweeteners, which are discharged from industries, reach water resources, and finally appear in drinking water, is involved. The chemical contaminants of EDs disturb the functions of glands from where hormones or juices are secreted and mix with blood directly. Their persistence results in adverse toxic effects in all living beings, for example, declining reproduction, endometriosis, cancer, and many more diseases. These are not easily mineralized or removed from water compared to various organic dye molecules because of their typical characteristic light absorption in the UV region. Therefore, it is very urgent to mineralize wastewater from such types of contaminants. Among the existing technologies, visible-light-triggered photocatalytic degradation is accredited as cost-effective, renewable, and environmentally friendly. Besides, the utilization of cheap visible light as a driving force with strong mineralization efficiency under facile reaction conditions and no harmful end products enables it to have a more beneficial effect. This review describes different classes of EDs, their adverse toxic effects, and efficient degradation through remarkable active nanomaterials/nanocomposites reported from 2015 to 2020. The detailed mechanisms of pollutant adsorption on the nanostructure surface and their decomposition actions have been interpreted. Also, different pollutant degradation pathways have been attentively considered and well-explained. Besides, the future outlook has been elucidated at the end.