ANTIBIOTICS AND RIVER POLLUTION

Key Findings of the study:

• Rivers worldwide are polluted with antibiotics that exceed environmental safety thresholds by up to 300 times.
  
  
• One or more common antibiotics is found in two-thirds of 711 samples taken from rivers in 72 countries.
  
  
• In dozens of locations, concentrations of the drugs — used to fight off bacterial infection in people and livestock — exceeded safety levels set by the AMR Industry Alliance, a grouping of more than 100 biotech and pharmaceutical companies.
  
  
• Safety limits were most frequently exceeded in Asia and Africa, but samples from Europe and the Americas showed that the problem is global in scope. The countries with the highest levels of antibiotic river pollution were Bangladesh, Kenya, Ghana, Pakistan and Nigeria.
  
  
• Ciprofloxacin, a frontline treatment for intestinal and urinary tract infections, surpassed the industry threshold at 51 of the sites tested.