Wastewater from homes and manufacturing facilities gets routed to wastewater treatment plants to be treated before being released into the waterways. Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (known as Eawag) reported in ACS Environmental Science & Technology that a single pharmaceutical manufacturing facility could be contaminating the Rhine River in Switzerland.
The water from a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility contains some biologically active and toxic compounds. While a wastewater treatment plant can remove many impurities, it can’t always remove all these dangerous substances before the treated water reaches a waterway (usually a stream or river). Heinz Singer and researchers from Eawag compared the discharged wastewater from two wastewater treatment plants near the Rhine River. One treatment plant handled domestic wastewater (homes and small businesses) and the other treated wastewater from a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility.
Singer and the team spent three months collecting daily samples from each plant. They analyzed the specimens using high-resolution mass spectrometry. The researchers looked for compounds that showed a large variation, and they found more of these compounds in the water samples from the pharmaceutical manufacturing facility. The team was able to identify 25 compounds that were specific to the pharmaceutical industry, like antidepressants and opioids. The levels of these compounds were far higher in the water from the pharmaceutical facility than the water from homes and small businesses. Additionally, the researchers found the same level of these toxic compounds more than 60 miles downstream in the Rhine River, meaning that all it takes is one company to affect the drinking water of millions.