Pakistan's Ravi 'most polluted' river in world: Study

Islamabad [Pakistan], February 17 : A new research has found the Ravi river in Pakistan to be the world's most polluted river, media reports said on Thursday.
The highest mean cumulative concentration was observed in the city of Lahore at 70.8 micrograms per litre, with one sampling site on the Ravi River reaching a maximum cumulative concentration of 189 micrograms per litre, The Express Tribune reported.
The most common contaminants were paracetamol, nicotine, caffeine and epilepsy and diabetes drugs in the river, the newspaper report said.
As many as 1,052 sampling sites along 258 rivers globally were monitored by the University of York to quantify the presence of pharmaceutical ingredients in these ecological environments.
The study concluded that contaminants in surface water posed a threat to environmental and or human health in more than a quarter of the studied locations globally, the report added.
An editorial published in The News International newspaper said that the Ravi, written about by poets and painted by artists, has been reduced to a drain full of human and industrial waste.
"An unbridled dumping of effluent has been going on for long, flouting all laws that various governments enacted but failed to enforce. One of the most significant causes of this water pollution is industrial waste emanating from factories on both sides of the river," the newspaper said.
Slamming the successive governments, the editorial said the Ravi is not alone in its misery; other major and minor waterways across Pakistan have been facing the same problem.