The Blue River in Tunisia was found to be one of the most polluted rivers in the world with pharmaceutical products.
The world’s rivers are heavily polluted with various drugs and other pharmaceutical products, posing a threat to the environment and human health, according to a major study by British scientists.
In a major study organized by the University of York, scientists discovered that the most common traces found in rivers around the world were paracetamol, anti-epileptic and diabetes drugs, as well as nicotine and caffeine.
Rivers in countries such as Pakistan, Bolivia, and Ethiopia are the most polluted. The least polluted rivers are in Iceland, Norway, and the Amazon basin.
The study, conducted by the University of York and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is one of the largest in the field: 258 rivers in 100 countries, over a thousand sampling sites.
In more than a quarter of the rivers studied, the so-called “active substances” from the composition of medicines were found in concentrations dangerous for river flora and fauna. Predictably, most of the pollution was found in poor countries, where wastewater treatment is not a priority, and where pharmaceutical companies are located.
At this site on the Nam Khan River in Laos, there were very few traces of medicinal chemistry.
In English, the translated text would be: “True, scientists admit that the impact of the most common chemical compounds from medicines on river ecology is still poorly studied.”
“We can say that the effect is likely to be negative, but every drug has to be tested, and there have been relatively few studies,” said BBC water ecology specialist Veronika Edmunds-Brown of the University of Hertfordshire.
But it is already known, for example, that contraceptives dissolved in water can affect the reproduction and growth of fish. In addition, the report states that pollution of rivers with antibiotics can lead to a decrease in their effectiveness: bacteria resistant to antibiotics develop in water with antibiotics. This is one aspect of the threat to human health posed by the pollution of rivers with pharmaceuticals.
The Nairobi River in Kenya is also one of the most polluted in the world.
“The way drugs work is that we take these chemicals, they have the desired effect on our bodies, and then they are excreted. And now we know that even the most advanced purification plants cannot completely break down these compounds, and they end up in rivers and lakes,” said John Wilkinson, who led the research, BBC.
Participants in the study most often found two chemical compounds from drugs in the river water: carbamazepine, used to treat epilepsy, and metformin, used to treat diabetes. In addition, high concentrations of acetaminophen, caffeine, and nicotine were often found. In Africa, artemisinin, which is found in anti-malarial drugs, has also joined the “top group”.
John Wilkinson, head of research, does not yet have an optimistic answer to the question of what to do about the pollution of rivers by pharmaceutical products. “It’s going to take a lot of people who are a lot smarter than me to solve this problem,” Dr. Wilkinson says. “But there is something we can do right now: we can start using medications properly.” The scientist suggests that people should tighten the rules of access to antibiotics and reduce their dosage.
