Study combines woodchips and biochar to clean water of pharmaceuticals, nutrients

What happens to ibuprofen after it eases your throbbing headache? Like many pharmaceuticals, it can remain in an active form when our bodies flush it out. That's a problem, because although wastewater treatment plants are good at reducing nutrient pollutants in water, they aren't designed to remove pharmaceuticals and personal care products. So antibiotics, hormones, and other drugs are sent back into streams and onto crop fields.