Tracking the surge of psychiatric pharmaceuticals in urban rivers of Curitiba amidst and beyond the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

The heightened contamination of urban rivers with psychiatric drugs poses significant environmental and public health risks due to their persistence and bioaccumulative nature. In this study, we assessed the concentrations of 10 psychiatric medicines in water and sediment samples from three rivers in Curitiba, Brazil, spanning the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic from September 2020 to November 2023. Our analysis revealed substantial variations in drug concentrations across rivers and sampling periods, with fluoxetine and sertraline being the most prevalent in waters (up to 1118 ng L) and sediments (up to 70 ng g DW).