Indian river pollution sparks call for change
The research was published in the Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology and suggests that waste water from the region’s pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities is not being adequately treated.
Samples were taken from the river used by the Patancheru Enviro Tech treatment facility in Hyderabad, which receives waste water from 90 pharmaceutical manufacturing plants.
Joakim Larsson, associate professor at the Sahlgrenska Academy in Sweden and a researcher on the study, said: "We used to think that pharmaceuticals that ended up in the environment mostly came from the use of the medicines and that the substances were dispersed through wastewater.
“We now know that certain factories that manufacture substances release very large quantities of active substances. We estimated that the treatment plant released 45 kilograms of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin in one day, which is equivalent to five times the daily consumption of Sweden."
Drugs were also found in nearby lakes that the treatment plant did not pump waste water into, suggesting that they are also entering the environment in another way.
A call for action
The research urges for action to be taken to reduce the release of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) into the environment.
In particular the researchers believe harmonised effluent standards should be incorporated into existing industry guidelines, such as good manufacturing practice (GMP), to provide a global regulatory system.
This should provide a more rigorous regulatory system than is currently in place and its global reach would stop Sweden, a country with high environmental standards, being involved in pollution by proxy through the purchase of APIs from abroad.
