Rivers polluted with antibiotics could cause the ‘next pandemic’, warn scientists

More than a quarter of the world’s rivers sampled in a major new study are found to be polluted with drugs to a toxic degree.

Pharmaceutical pollution poses a “global threat” to environmental and human health, according to the researchers. When antibiotics get into our waterways they make it more likely for bacteria to develop antimicrobial resistance - which is said by the WHO and UN to be one of the biggest dangers to humanity.

In the first truly global investigation into the issue, scientists measured the concentration of 61 active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) at more than 1,000 sites along 258 rivers spanning every continent - 104 countries in total.

Only two places in the world were unpolluted, according to the study published in the journal PNAS: Iceland and a Venezuelan village where the Indigenous people do not use modern medicine.

"We've known for over two decades now that pharmaceuticals make their way into the aquatic environment where they may affect the biology of living organisms,” explains Dr John Wilkinson, co-leader of the study based at the University of York in the UK.

“But one of the largest problems we have faced in tackling this issue is that we’ve not been very representative when monitoring these contaminants, with almost all of the data focused on a select few areas in North America, Western Europe and China.”

Madrid has the most polluted river in Europe, ranking in the top 10 per cent of global places with the highest cumulative concentrations of APIs. Glasgow also came in the top 20 per cent globally.

Elsewhere, hotspots of toxic pharma water were found in Lahore in Pakistan, La Paz in Bolivia, Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and Dallas, US.

There is a strong correlation between the socioeconomic status