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.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
Both sides of the Taiwan Strait share a political foundation based on the “1992 consensus” and opposition to Taiwanese independence, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today said during her meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Both sides of the Strait should plan and build institutionalized and sustainable mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation based on that foundation to make peaceful development across the Strait irreversible, she said. Peace is a shared moral value across the Strait, and both sides should move beyond political confrontation to seek institutionalized solutions to prevent war, she said. Mutually beneficial cross-strait relations are what the
RSS