Lahore’s River Ravi among most polluted rivers in the world

The water flowing through River Ravi has been found to be among the most polluted in the world, reports Dawn.

A study, which is part of the University of York-led Global Monitoring of Pharmaceuticals Project, measured the presence of 61 pharmaceuticals in 258 rivers around the world. More than 1,000 test sites in over 100 countries provided samples for the study. More than a quarter of the 258 rivers sampled had “active pharmaceutical ingredients” present at a level deemed unsafe for aquatic organisms.

Waterways in Lahore, Bolivia, and Ethiopia are among the most contaminated, according to the study while rivers in Iceland, Norway, and the Amazon rainforest fared best.

Pollution of the world’s rivers by medications and pharmaceutical products, according to the research, constitutes a “threat to environmental and global health”.