What’s really in our water? We can't manage what we can't measure

A nice cool glass of forever chemicals, painkillers, antibiotics, antihistamines, and synthetic hormones... testing for pharmaceuticals, PFAS, DOC, or emerging contaminants should be part of routine water monitoring — not an occasional research project

Michael Bertram: "Our study is among the first to show that pharmaceutical pollution can affect not just behaviour in the lab, but outcomes for animals in their natural environment."

Ireland’s waters are in trouble — and not just from the usual suspects. Sure, fertiliser runoff still feeds algal blooms in streams and lakes. But there’s more to the story: salmon swimming on anxiety medication, pesticides disrupting aquatic food chains, and forever chemicals that refuse to break down. You could say our lakes, rivers, and wetlands have become chemical cocktails — shaken, stirred, and dangerously under-regulated.

This isn’t some distant, invisible threat. It’s flowing beneath our bridges, past our farms and towns, and into our drinking water supplies. And while new data shows glimmers of improvement, our freshwater systems are under pressure like never before, caught between climate extremes, land-use change, and the leftover chemistry of modern life.