The Manzanares River is the most polluted for pharmaceuticals from all over Europe. It is one of the conclusions drawn from a study conducted by the University of York and has been published in the scientific journal ‘PNAS‘.
To carry out this study, More than 200 river waters from all over the world were analysed, in the Center of Excellence in Mass Spectrometry that is located in this university. Among those analyzed, are the waters of rivers such as the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Danube, or the Seine. The Manzanares registers a average of 17 micrograms of drugs per liter, with a peak of 59.5 micrograms, which places it as the fourteenth most polluted river of the world.
As explained by environmentalist Andreu Rico to ‘The country‘, one of the causes that could cause this high concentration of drug residues in the waters of the river that crosses the capital is the low flow of the river itself. Precisely, the study mentions that this situation occurs in countries where the climate is usually aridlike in Spain and sites that receive untreated wastewater discharges. It tends to occur less frequently in places with limited anthropogenic influence.
Among the substances detected, up to five were found in the Manzanares that have been classified as “potential risk of ecotoxicity”, that is, they could be harmful to the environment. These are propranolol, verapamil, citalopram, metronidazole, and sulfamethoxazole. The first two Pharmacological substances are medications that are prescribed for treatment against hypertension.
As for the rest, citalopram is used as medicine antidepressantmetronizadol is an antibiotic is a drug anti-infective used to fight different infections. For his part, the sulfamethoxazole is an antibiotic that treats infections related to the urinary system.
Pakistan, the city with the highest number of pollution recorded
On the river waters of other countries of the world, pakistan tops the listwhere the level of drug contamination has been recorded in the Ravi River, in the city of Lahore, with an average of 70 micrograms of drugs per liter. It is followed by the Seke river in La Paz, in Bolivia, where the average concentration reached 69 micrograms, and the Omo river in Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia, whose data was 51 micrograms.
Other rivers such as the Matanza-Riachuelo, in Buenos Aires (Argentina) recorded an average lower than that of the Manzanares, with an average of 16 micrograms. In Oceania the highest data was reported in the city of adelaide (Australia), while in North America was San José (Costa Rica) where the highest data was recorded.
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