Pharmaceutical Pollution in the World's Rivers

PNAS February 22, 2022 119 (8) e2113947119; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2113947119

Edited by Andrea Rinaldo, Faculty of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Institute of Ecohydrology, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. Received 11 August 2021; accepted 10 December 2021.

DESCRIPTION

This study was investigating pharmaceutical constituents of rivers that have been found to have adverse ecological and human health effects.

They said that studies assessing these are available in 75 out of 196 countries, with most of the studies being conducted in North America and Western Europe.

The study presented the results of a global reconnaissance of pharmaceutical pollution in rivers. It monitored 1,052 sampling sites along 258 rivers in 104 countries on all continents, representing 471.4 million pharmaceutical fingerprints, according to the report.

It said these results show that the presence of these pollutants in surface water poses a threat to the environment and/or human health in more than a quarter of the sites surveyed worldwide.