New research published within the framework of the UN Ocean Decade reviews the status of pharmaceutical pollution in global estuaries

Pollution in estuaries is one of the major threats to marine biodiversity and fishery resources, and pharmaceuticals are one of the most important contaminants of emerging concern in aquatic ecosystems. To synthesize pharmaceutical pollution levels in estuaries over the past 20 years from a global perspective, this review identified data for 239 pharmaceuticals across 91 global estuaries in 26 countries.

Key findings include:

• Analgesics, antibiotics, and stimulants were the most commonly reported in estuaries.
• Nineteen pharmaceuticals were identified with very high ecological risks.
• Pharmaceutical pollution was correlated with regional unemployment and poverty.

The paper was published in Environment International under the title of "Occurrence and potential risks of practical pollution in global realities: A critical review and analysis". The first author was Demilade T. Adedipe, a PhD student at the State Key Laboratory of Marine Pollution (SKLMP), City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK), and the corresponding authors were Professor Kenneth Mei Yee Leung, the director of SKLMP, and Dr. Chong Chen, a postdoctoral research fellow at SKLMP.

This study is the first paper released by the Global Estuaries Monitoring (GEM) Programme, an initiative led by the SKLMP at CityUHK, and endorsed by the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030).

Following its release, the paper garnered attention and coverage from the UN Ocean Decade on various platforms like Facebook and X.

Read the study: https://ow.ly/4v7n50TB8w5

Find out more about the Global Estuaries Monitoring Programme: https://www.globalestuaries.org/