"Our problem is that too many toxic pharmaceuticals are entering Scottish waterways through wastewater treatment plants.I’m addressing this problem by influencing prescription policies to eliminate unnecessary pharmaceutical waste from entering wastewater."

Tony is a Hydro Nations Scholar and PhD researcher in the school of Pharmacy and Life Sciences at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. Tony’s PhD is focussed on investigating the presence, fate and ecotoxicity of pharmaceutical enantiomers in environmental waters. Over the course of her studies she will develop and validate a new chiral UHPLC-MS/MS method and apply this to monitor environmental waters across Scotland. Identified pharmaceutical enantiomers of concern will then undergo toxicological studies across three trophic levels, the data from which will be used to inform policy and formulation changes in the hopes of making prescriptions greener for the environment.

Prior to starting the Hydro Nation Scholarship, Tony was involved in researching the feasibility of using prescription data to predict wastewater influent concentrations of pharmaceuticals. She has also performed research investigating the adsorption and desorption of pharmaceuticals to and from microplastics in environmental waters and simulated gastric fluids. Tony has so far achieved a distinction for her MSc in Analytical Science with Drug Analysis and Toxicology along with a First Class Honours in Forensic and Analytical Sciences both from the Robert Gordon University.

Email: t.wagstaff@rgu.ac.uk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonywagstaff95/