GLOBAL MONITORING OF PHARMACEUTICALS PROJECT

Pharmaceuticals are an essential component of a healthy society and their use is ubiquitous across the world. Over recent decades, much research has been conducted elucidating their concentrations and fate in surface waters. However, limited, if any, data are reported for many parts of the world.

Nearly everything we use on a day-to-day basis will eventually make its way to the environment. The pills we take are no different. Our bodies only break down a proportion of the medicine we use and whatever it does not metabolise will leave our bodies and enter the sewage network. While modern wastewater treatment facilities are effective barriers for many environmentally-sensitive materials in wastewater, they cannot completely remove pharmaceuticals. Hence, after sewage treatment, some amount of the medicines we take will enter rivers and lakes as wastewater treatment plant effluent. 

In some parts of the world, limited to no waste treatment can result in very high levels of pharmaceuticals in surface water. Similarly, waste from pharmaceutical manufacturing plants or runoff from landfill may also result in high levels of contamination in the aquatic environment. 

Please visit the web of the project here

The results

Of the 61 pharmaceuticals we monitored, 53 were detected in at least one sampling site. Of which, 4 were detected across all 7 continents.

Carbamazepine was the most frequently detected pharmaceutical worldwide. The drug was found in the water of 62% of sampling sites globally- that’s 652 locations across all the continents except Antarctica.

The most polluted sampling site worldwide was located in the Rio Seke (La Paz, Bolivia) and had a cumulative pharmaceutical concentration of 297 µg/L. For comparison, that’s a 115 times higher pharmaceutical concentration than in the East River of New York City.