Population growth and industrialisation have increased the demand for crude oil; consequently, the exploration of new oil reservoirs has increased the number of oil spillage accidents . The discharge of oily wastewater from steel processing, food processing, petrochemical industries, and oil-spillage accidents is detrimental to ecosystems and human health . Many chemical, physical, and biological techniques have been used for oily wastewater treatment, such as flotation, coagulation, activated sludge, and membraneseparation techniques . Membrane separation has attracted immense attention because of its cost-effectiveness, high separation efficiency, and scalability . Nevertheless, polymeric membranes often undergo fouling owing to the irreversible attachment of oil droplets to their hydrophobic surfaces . Hence, it is necessary to develop self-cleaning superhydrophilic membranes with improved durability . Superhydrophilic membranes are developed by numerous methods, such as blending with hydrophilic polymers, surface modification by "grafting to" and "grafting from" techniques, surface segregation, and bio-adhesion . Superhydrophilic poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF)-based ultrafiltration (UF) membranes have been fabricated by grafting (through nucleophilic substitution reactions), with the synthesis of crosslinked amphiphilic networks on the reactive membrane surfaces . These membranes demonstrate effective oil-water separation with excellent antifouling and self-cleaning properties . Notably, the environmental impacts of these membranes are still unknown.