Common Medicines Found In Rivers Due To Ineffective Wastewater Treatment

A recent study has revealed that municipal wastewater treatment plants are not effectively removing several everyday medicines from wastewater. As a result, these drugs are being released into rivers, lakes, and streams, potentially harming fish and other aquatic organisms.

The research was conducted by Paulina Chaber-Jarlachowicz and her team from the Institute of Environmental Protection in Warsaw, Poland. Their findings, published in PLOS One, examined how well six wastewater treatment plants in Poland removed pharmaceuticals from sewage.

Wastewater treatment plants are designed to eliminate harmful substances from water before it is returned to the environment. Typically, they use bacteria and microbes to break down organic matter, which is then removed as sludge. However, these systems were not built to handle medicines, and many of these drugs pass through the treatment process without being removed.

Harmful Drugs in Wastewater

The researchers analyzed wastewater both before and after treatment, measuring the levels of various drugs in the treated water and sludge. They found that all six plants still released several pharmaceutical compounds into the environment after treatment.

Some drugs, such as the painkillers naproxen and ketoprofen, and the antihistamine salicylic acid, were mostly removed. However, many others remained in the treated water or even increased in concentration.

For certain medications like fluoxetine (better known as Prozac), diclofenac (a painkiller), and carbamazepine (used for seizures), the levels in the treated water were sometimes higher than in the original wastewater. This could be due to chemical changes during treatment that make the drugs more detectable, or the release of these substances from the sludge.

Fluoxetine and loratadine (an allergy drug) were found to be the biggest risk to aquatic life. Even in small amounts, these drugs can interfere with the hormone systems of animals.

What Needs to Be Done

The study supports growing concerns that current wastewater treatment methods are insufficient for dealing with pharmaceutical pollution. According to the researchers, the total amount of medicines released annually into rivers from the plants studied was over 40 tonnes. The main contributors were ketoprofen, sulfamethoxazole, carbamazepine, and fluoxetine.

The researchers emphasize that more research is needed to develop better ways to remove or break down these drugs before they enter the environment and cause significant damage.

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