A global trend of caffeine consumption over time and related-environmental impacts

Abstract

Caffeine is one of the most consumed substances, and it has been largely detected in aquatic ecosystems. We investigated the trends in caffeine consumption over three decades and its relationships with gross domestic product (GDP) and human development index (HDI) to understand global patterns and to identify potential hotspots of contamination. The total caffeine consumption is increasing mainly due to population growth. Moreover, caffeine consumption per capita is also increasing in some countries, such as Brazil, Italy, and Ethiopia. A high positive correlation between caffeine consumption per capita with HDI and GDP was found for coffee-importing countries in Europe, while a high negative correlation was found for coffee-exporting countries in Africa. The literature review showed that the highest caffeine concentrations coincide with countries that present an increasing caffeine consumption per capita. Also, approximately 35% of the caffeine concentrations reported in the literature were above the predicted no-effect concentration in the environment and, again, overlaps with countries with increasing per capita consumption. Despite the high degradation rate, caffeine consumption tends to increase in a near future, which may also increase the overall amount of caffeine that comes into the environment, possibly exceeding the thresholds of several species described as tolerant to the current environmental concentrations. Therefore, it is essential to prevent caffeine from reaching aquatic ecosystems, implementing sewage treatment systems, and improving their efficiency.

Keywords: Coffee; GDP; HDI; Surface water; Wastewater.