EU taking a stand against pharmaceutical residues in wastewater

Every year, Uppsala's water treatment plant processes around 20 million cubic meters of wastewater. A cocktail of powerful pollutants - residues from medications against depression, inflammation, anxiety, and high blood pressure - have been detected in the water.

"We are talking about nanograms per litre. So it is very low level. But some of our priority substances could have a negative effect on the aquatic environment already at those very low levels," says Anna Maria Sundin, a Development Engineer at Uppsala Vatten.

Such pharmaceutical residues can severely affect the internal organs and reproductive cycles of fish and amphibians. The Uppsala water treatment plant's pilot project aims to address this issue by removing at least 80% of five of these harmful substances.

To achieve this ambitious target, the project employs complex technologies including activated carbon and anion exchange. However, these come with significant challenges due to the varied properties of the compounds. Sundin states, "The different compounds on different substances have different chemical and physical properties. And that affects the removal efficiency."

The urgency of upgraded removal technologies cannot be overstated, particularly given the global scale of the problem. It's estimated that 4,000 active pharmaceutical ingredients are being used in medicines worldwide, and up to 90% of oral doses can be excreted by our bodies as active substances.

This persistent issue extends well beyond Sweden. Stefan Berggren, Director at the Swedish Knowledge Centre for Pharmaceuticals in the Environment, explains, "One of the issues is that they are very resistant to breaking down in the body...they will reach the environment as a fairly persistent