**9. Conclusion**

Due to the lack of information regarding with environmental occurrence, ecotoxicity tests and it unstable structure, β-lactam drugs like amoxicillin are not generally thought could be of concern as environmental pollutants, however, amoxicillin is one of the most consumed antibiotics in the world, hence this pharmaceutical compound could be present at concentra‐ tions of concern by continual infusion in to the environment.

In the literature, there have been found traces of this antimicrobial compound in different water bodies; furthermore, some toxicological tests reported toxic effects in algae and fishes as well as the calculation of the risk quotient (RQ) in UK and Korea suggest that amoxicillin should be consider as a pollutant of high priority in the environment.

However, at present, the available scientific knowledge is less than what is needed to fully assess the risks that amoxicillin pose to the environment; therefore, future works will need to focus on more detailed ecotoxicity testing, using a wide range of aquatic organisms, in order to fully understand the environmental toxicity of this antimicrobial product and how may affect both the aquatic and terrestrial environments and indicate possible remediation strategies; future works are needed in the development of new analytical methods that are more sensitive, accurate and reliable in order to assess the occurrence of the amoxicillin and its metabolites in different water bodies.

A large amount of research work is necessary before a thorough understanding of this severe environmental issue.
