Millions of kilometres of rivers around the world are carrying antibiotic pollution at levels high enough to promote drug resistance and harm aquatic life, a McGill University-led study warns.
Millions of kilometres of rivers around the world are carrying antibiotic pollution at levels high enough to promote drug resistance and harm aquatic life, a McGill University-led study warns.
Published in PNAS Nexus, the study is the first to estimate the scale of global river contamination from human antibiotics use. Researchers calculated that about 8,500 tonnes of antibiotics – nearly one-third of what people consume annually – end up in river systems around the world each year even after in many cases passing through wastewater systems.
“While the amounts of residues from individual antibiotics translate into only very small concentrations in most rivers, which makes them very difficult to detect, the chronic and cumulative environmental exposure to these substances can still pose a risk to human health and aquatic ecosystems,” said Heloisa Ehalt Macedo, a postdoctoral fellow in geography at McGill and lead author of the study.
Read More: University of McGill
