Lidocaine (LDC) is a prevalent positional drug of anesthetic and found in aqueous environments as a pollutant due to its widespread use. The indiscriminate use of the chemicals leads to its release into the environment and it is a crucial ecological problem. The removal of pharmaceutical pollutants from industrial effluent is a difficult task. Many biological and physical techniques are being routinely used for removal of these pharmaceutical pollutants. The present study reports on the use of tungsten trioxide (WO3) nanoparticles for the degradation of LDC by making use of the photocatalytic property of NPs. WO3 NPs was synthesized and characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-Visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) techniques. WO3 NPs showed a maximum photocatalytic effect at pH 6 and it degraded 95.48% and 97.5% of LDC within 1 h under visible and sunlight, respectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.