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antibiotics
World's Rivers Awash in Pharmaceuticals, Historic Study Reveals
Researchers who examined water samples from over 1,000 locations warn that "pharmaceutical pollution poses a global threat to environmental and human health."
Feb 14, 2022
Underscoring the value of collaboration, experts from around the world on Monday unveiled what they described as the first "truly global study" of pharmaceutical drugs contaminating rivers, which has "deleterious effects on ecological and human health."
"I hope the study will lead to projects that support and expand sewage treatment where it is needed the most."
The historic analysis, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involved 127 authors from 86 institutions. They examined surface water samples from 1,052 sites in 104 countries--including 36 that had never been monitored before-- across all continents for 61 different active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).
Sample sites ranged from an Indigenous community in Venezuela where modern medicine is not used to highly populated urban areas such as Delhi, London, and New York City. Researchers also gathered samples from regions with political instability, including Baghdad, Nablus in the Palestinian West Bank, and Cameroon's capital, Yaounde.
The United States was the "most extensively studied" nation, with samples collected at 81 locations along 29 rivers across Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New York, and Texas. Samples were also taken in every European Union member state except Malta, which the paper explains "was not included due to the country's lack of rivers."
The paper notes that all four contaminants detected on every continent--caffeine, nicotine, acetaminophen or paracetamol, and cotinine--are "considered either lifestyle compounds or over-the-counter APIs." Another 14 APIs, including various antidepressants and antihistamines, were found on all continents except Antarctica.
"Concentrations of at least one API at 25.7% of the sampling sites were greater than concentrations considered safe for aquatic organisms, or which are of concern in terms of selection for antimicrobial resistance," the study states. "Therefore, pharmaceutical pollution poses a global threat to environmental and human health, as well as to delivery of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals."
The Guardian's Damian Carrington reported that "the APIs end up in rivers after being taken by people and livestock and then excreted into the sewer system or directly into the environment, though some may also leak from pharmaceutical factories."
Lead author John Wilkinson of the University of York told Carrington that "the World Health Organization and U.N. and other organizations say antimicrobial resistance is the single greatest threat to humanity--it's a next pandemic."
"In 19% of all of the sites we monitored, the concentrations of [antibiotics] exceeded the levels that we'd expect to encourage bacteria to develop resistance," he said.
With the exceptions of Iceland and the Yanomami Village in Venezuela, "at least one API was detected in all of our study campaigns," the paper reveals. The highest concentrations were documented in Lahore, Pakistan; La Paz, Bolivia; and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Overall, the most polluted samples came from African and Asian countries, the experts found. The most contaminated samples from Europe, North America, and Oceania were from Madrid, Spain; San Jose, Costa Rica; and Adelaide, Australia, respectively.
\u201c#Pharmaceutical #pollution is contaminating water on every continent shows a new #study published in @PNASNews today. \n\n" A truly global #problem," says @AcesSthlmUni Professor Anna Sobek\n \nhttps://t.co/qarCyIt50G\u201d— Department of Environmental Science at Sthlm Uni (@Department of Environmental Science at Sthlm Uni) 1644874173
"While the majority of previous studies have monitored active pharmaceutical ingredients in rivers, these studies have often excluded many countries, have measured only a select few pharmaceuticals, and used different analytical methods," co-author Anna Sobek of Stockholm University said in a statement. "This means that it is difficult to make direct comparisons between studies and, hence, assess the scale of pharmaceutical pollution across the globe."
Though she emphasized that the study confirms the issue is global in nature, Sobek noted that "in general, the rivers with the highest level of pharmaceutical pollution were found in low- to medium-income countries where there are no adequate water treatment facilities and where high emissions from the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals are found."
"The findings of this study remind us that the medicines we buy in pharmacies can have a big impact on the environment of the countries they are manufactured in," Sobek said.
"Since we clearly show that access to sewage treatment facilities significantly improves water quality," she added, "I hope the study will lead to projects that support and expand sewage treatment where it is needed the most."
Wilkinson told Carrington that "we know good sewage connectivity and wastewater treatment is the key to minimizing, though not necessarily eliminating, pharmaceutical concentrations," but it "is extremely expensive as there's a lot of infrastructure involved."
\u201cGreat to see our @YorkEnvironment paper \u2018Pharmaceutical pollution of the World\u2019s Rivers\u2019 just published in @PNASNews! A huge thanks to the global monitoring of pharmaceuticals consortium made up of 127 authors across 86 institutions for making this happen! https://t.co/17FqAYXPc4\u201d— John Wilkinson (@John Wilkinson) 1644872413
In a statement, Wilkinson said the research project "is an excellent example of how the global scientific community can come together to tackle large-scale environmental issues."
The paper highlights that the authors' approach "could be applied to other APIs and other classes of pollutants, such as personal care products, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, pesticides, and metals," as well as "expanded to other environmental media, such as sediments, soils, and biota."
"As we move toward 2030, the new paradigm in environmental monitoring must involve a global, inclusive, and interconnected effort," the study concludes. "Only through global collaboration will we be able to generate the monitoring data required to make informed decisions on mitigation approaches required to reduce the environmental impacts of chemicals."
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Lawsuit Challenges EPA Approval of the Use of Medically Important Antibiotic as a Pesticide on Citrus Crops
Streptomycin Use Allowed on More Than 650,000 Acres in Florida, California
Mar 25, 2021
A coalition of public interest groups, including farmworker, health justice and conservation organizations, sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today for approving widespread spraying of streptomycin, a medically important antibiotic, on citrus trees to prevent or treat citrus greening disease or citrus canker. The practice of spraying antibiotics on trees has proven highly ineffective in combating these diseases, and it can drive antibiotic resistance in bacteria that threaten human health.
The EPA failed to ensure that the approved uses of streptomycin as a pesticide would not cause unreasonable harm to human health or the environment and failed to adequately assess impacts to endangered species, according to the lawsuit.
Streptomycin, which is banned from use on crops in many countries, belongs to a class of antibiotics the World Health Organization (WHO) considers "critically" important to treating human disease, such as multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration have expressed concerns about the use of medically important antibiotics as pesticides and have spoken out publicly against it.
"Farmworkers are already exposed to a mix of toxic pesticides in the course of their daily work," said Jeannie Economos, Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Project Coordinator at Farmworker Association of Florida. "It is unconscionable for EPA to use farmworkers as guinea pigs when it comes to antibiotic-resistant bacteria that risks the health of them and their children. Instead of promoting this risky false solution, EPA should look at effective ways to control citrus diseases that are safe for our food supply and for the essential workers and their families who sustain our food system."
The agency's decision greenlights the use of more than 650,000 pounds of streptomycin on citrus crops in Florida and California alone. By contrast, the United States currently uses only about 14,000 pounds of aminoglycosides, the antibiotic class that includes streptomycin, for medical purposes each year.
The EPA's approval of streptomycin as a pesticide followed a similar approval two years ago of the "highly" important antibiotic oxytetracycline for use on the same citrus crops.
"Allowing life-saving antibiotics to be used as pesticides is an unnecessary and dangerous practice that fuels a growing public health epidemic: antibiotic resistance," said Allison Johnson, Sustainable Food Policy Advocate at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). "The EPA should be championing agricultural practices that protect farm workers and their communities, public health, and the environment-like building healthy soil and diversified farming-not increasing the use of dangerous pesticides."
Recent research suggests that antibiotic resistance is on the rise nationally, with an estimated 162,000 people in the United States dying each year from antibiotic-resistant infections. Furthermore, the misuse of antibiotics has fueled resistance in tuberculosis-causing bacteria; the global TB pandemic still kills more than 1 million people around the world every year.
"To jeopardize an essential tool in controlling the global tuberculosis pandemic by allowing it to be sprayed on citrus trees is the height of irresponsibility," said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Leading global health officials are sounding the alarm about overuse of essential medicines like streptomycin, yet the EPA's pesticide office is recklessly blessing its use as a pesticide."
The WHO ranked antibiotic resistance among the top 10 health threats in 2019.
"The more you use antibiotics, the greater the risk that bacteria resistant to the drugs will flourish and spread. Experts estimate that drug-resistant infections could kill 10 million people globally per year by 2050--nearly four times as many people who have died worldwide from COVID-19," said Matt Wellington, Public Health Campaigns Director for U.S. PIRG. "Spraying medically important antibiotics on citrus crops is absurd under any circumstances, but it's especially absurd when we know it's not going to solve the citrus industry's problems."
The EPA's own analysis indicates that the widespread use of streptomycin could also have harmful long-term effects on mammals that forage in treated fields. The agency has not analyzed how this change could affect specific endangered and threatened mammals that forage or nest in and around these citrus groves, or that rely on waterways contaminated by the antibiotic. Nor has EPA adequately assessed the risk that streptomycin poses to pollinators, whose health and survival are already compromised by a wide range of stressors, including other pesticides.
Today's lawsuit was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by Beyond Pesticides, Center for Biological Diversity, Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida (ECOSWF), Farmworker Association of Florida, Farmworker Justice, Migrant Clinicians Network, NRDC and U.S. PIRG. Parties are represented by in-house counsel and Earthjustice.
More information available here.
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Coalition Calls for Urgent Action On Livestock Antibiotic Overuse
Jan 25, 2021
The Antibiotics Off The Menu (AOTM) coalition has released a statement calling for the Biden Administration to address the ongoing global threat of antibiotic resistance at the federal level, and for the restaurant industry to continue taking action to limit the use of medically important antibiotics on livestock. Through AOTM, Center for Food Safety works in coalition with other public interest, animal welfare, and environmental groups seeking to preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics in treating sick people and sick animals.
Jaydee Hanson, policy director at Center for Food Safety, released the following statement:
"Bacterial resistance to antibiotic drugs is one of the most serious global health threats in the world today. Before COVID-19, diseases like Tuberculosis were death sentences to millions of people around the world, while medically important antibiotics used to treat them were fed to chicken, pigs, and cows. Today, COVID-19 is linked to secondary bacterial infections that could lead to more antibiotic resistance."
"The restaurant industry must strengthen its efforts to limit antibiotic use to only treating sick animals and the Biden administration must tackle this issue head on as it manages the COVID-19 crisis. Two immediate, impactful steps to ensuring the effectiveness of antibiotics moving forward would be mandating a reduction in medically important livestock antibiotic use by 50% by 2023 relative to 2009 levels, and creating a program that tracks antibiotic use and resistance at the farm level."
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