Hundreds of rivers around the world from the Thames to the Tigris are awash with dangerously high levels of antibiotics, the largest global study on the subject said.
Antibiotic pollution is one of the key routes by which bacteria develop resistance to the life-saving medicines, rendering them ineffective for human use.
“A lot of the resistance genes we see in human pathogens originated from environmental bacteria,” said William Gaze, a microbial ecologist at the University of Exeter in England who studies antimicrobial resistance, but was not involved in the study.
The rise in bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics is a global health emergency that could kill 10 million people by 2050, the UN said last month.
The drugs find their way into rivers and soil via human and animal waste, and leaks from wastewater treatment plants and drug manufacturing facilities.
“It’s quite scary and depressing. We could have large parts of the environment that have got antibiotics at levels high enough to affect resistance,” said Alistair Boxall, an environmental scientist at the University of York in England, who co-led the study.
The research, presented on Monday last week at a conference in Helsinki, shows that some of the world’s best-known rivers are contaminated with antibiotics classified as critically important for the treatment of serious infections.
In many cases they were detected at unsafe levels, meaning resistance is much more likely to develop and spread.
Samples taken from the Danube in Austria contained seven antibiotics — including clarithromycin, which is used to treat respiratory tract infections such as pneumonia and bronchitis — at nearly four times the level considered safe.
The Danube, Europe’s second-largest river, was the continent’s most polluted. Eight percent of the sites tested in Europe were above safe limits.
The Thames, generally regarded as one of Europe’s cleanest rivers, was contaminated, along with some of its tributaries, by a mixture of five antibiotics.
One site on the river and three on its tributaries were polluted above safe levels. Ciprofloxacin, which treats infections of the skin and urinary tract, peaked at more than three times safe levels.
Even rivers contaminated with low levels of antibiotics are a threat, Gaze said.
“Even the low concentrations seen in Europe can drive the evolution of resistance and increase the likelihood that resistance genes transfer to human pathogens,” he said.
The researchers tested 711 sites in 72 countries and found antibiotics in 65 percent of them. In 111 of the sites, the concentrations of antibiotics exceeded safe levels, with the worst cases more than 300 times over the safe limit.
Lower-income countries generally had higher antibiotic concentrations in rivers, with locations in Africa and Asia performing worst.
They peaked in Bangladesh, where metronidazole, used to treat vaginal infections, was found at more than 300 times the safe level.
PROVOCATIVE: Chinese Deputy Ambassador to the UN Sun Lei accused Japan of sending military vessels to deliberately provoke tensions in the Taiwan Strait China denounced remarks by Japan and the EU about the South China Sea at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, and accused Tokyo of provocative behavior in the Taiwan Strait and planning military expansion. Ayano Kunimitsu, a Japanese vice foreign minister, told the Council meeting on maritime security that Tokyo was seriously concerned about the situation in the East China and South China seas, and reiterated Japan’s opposition to any attempt to change the “status quo” by force, and obstruction of freedom of navigation and overflight. Stavros Lambrinidis, head of the EU delegation to the UN, also highlighted South China Sea
SILENCING CRITICS: In addition to blocking Taiwan, China aimed to prevent rights activists from speaking out against authoritarian states, a Cabinet department said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday condemned transnational repression by Beijing after RightsCon, a major digital human rights conference scheduled to be held in Zambia this week, was abruptly canceled due to Chinese pressure over Taiwanese participation. This year’s RightsCon, the world’s largest conference discussing issues “at the intersection of human rights and technology,” was scheduled to take place from tomorrow to Friday in Lusaka, and expected to draw 2,600 in-person attendees from 150 countries, along with 1,100 online participants. However, organizers were forced to cancel the event due to behind-the-scenes pressure from China, the ministry said, expressing its “strongest condemnation”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said it expects its 2-nanometer (2nm) chip capacity to grow at a compound annual rate of 70 percent from this year to 2028. The projection comes as five fabs begin volume production of 2-nanometer chips this year — two in Hsinchu and three in Kaohsiung — TSMC senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer Cliff Hou (侯永清) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Silicon Valley, California, last week. Output in the first year of 2-nanometer production, which began in the fourth quarter of last year, is expected to
Taiwan’s economy grew far faster than expected in the first quarter, as booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications drove a surge in exports, spilling over into investment and consumption, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. GDP growth was 13.69 percent year-on-year during the January-to-March period, beating the DGBAS’ February forecast by 2.23 percentage points and marking the most robust growth in nearly four decades, DGBAS senior official Chiang Hsin-yi (江心怡) told a news conference in Taipei. The result was powered by exports, which remain the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, Chiang said. Outbound shipments jumped 51.12 percent year-on-year to
RSS