The River Almond has been named in a report detailing medicinal drugs polluting Scotland’s waterways - breaching the pollution safety level of one drug by over 50,000 times.
The pollution safety levels have been breached across the country 2300 times over the last seven years according to data released by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA).
The measures record contamination from 26 drugs - including ibuprofen, oestrogen, antibiotics, painkillers, antidepressants, anaesthetics, and caffeine.
The drugs find their way into sewers from people going to the toilet after taking them, or flushing them away unused.
In the worst cases, recorded concentrations were hundreds or even thousands of times higher than those deemed safe.
The recorded concentrations of drugs in some samples were many times higher than the ‘predicted no-effect concentration’ (PNEC) of each drug - the level above which they could begin to cause a risk.
Recorded levels of caffeine, used as a stimulant in some medicines like paracetamol, were more than 50,000 times the PNEC in the River Almond.
Samples were taken from around 30 sewage plants and other sites between 2013 and 2019.
Most of the breaches were found near sewage works across the Lothians, as well as in Lanarkshire, Tayside, and Glasgow - named rivers included the Almond, the Clyde in Glasgow, the Don in Grampian, the Firth of Forth, Cromarty Firth, and the Firth of Tay.
It also poses a risk to human health by supporting the propagation of viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites around the medicinal pollution and helping the diseases develop resistance to drugs.
The development of so-called ‘superbugs’ poses a ‘significant risk to humanity’ - a study published in medical journal, The Lancet, in January 2022 found that these treatment-resistant bugs are a leading cause of death worldwide - killing around 3500 people everyday.
A spokesperson for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) said:“SEPA is a founding member of the One Health Breakthrough Partnership (OHBP) and played a key role in the production of a new data visualisation tool, revealed in June this year, helping researchers better understand the effects medicines have on Scotland’s environment.
“The main route for human medicines to enter the water environment is via our toilets.
“Some of this is due to the way our bodies metabolise medicines – but the public can help to reduce this problem by taking old or unused medicines back to the pharmacy to dispose of them properly, rather than flushing them down the toilet or putting them in the bin.
“SEPA will continue to work with the OHBP and other UK and global partners to identify and prioritise the medicines that are presenting the greatest risks to our water environments and to explore ways in which such information might be used to inform prescribing of medicines and future regulatory standards.”
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