
‘Unsafe’ levels of antibiotics found in rivers in 72 countries - respinal
https://www.france24.com/en/20190527-environment-rivers-world-antibiotics-pollution-safe-levels-who-york-study-antimicrobial-resistance
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anonymouz
Is anybody able to find the actual study? The best I could find is the news
release from the University of York from May [1].

[1] [https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-
events/news/2019/research/an...](https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-
events/news/2019/research/antibiotics-found-in-some-of-worlds-rivers/)

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r00fus
I’d like to know how much was from people vs livestock.

Could we correlate based on types and concentration of the antibiotics found?

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callmeal
Please stop with this fud. 80% of antibiotic production goes to the livestock
industry[0] and that is where all the antibiotic resistant bacteria evolve.

>Antimicrobials are widely used for disease prevention and growth promotion in
food animals. In the United States, antimicrobial use in food animals is
estimated to account for ∼80% of the nation’s annual antimicrobial
consumption, a significant fraction of which involves antimicrobials that are
important in human medicine in the treatment of common infections and also
necessary to perform medical procedures such as major surgeries, organ
transplantation, and chemotherapy.

Read some of the tables in [1] (data from 2017) on how antibiotics are
administered, they are shocking:

Feed : 3,432,373 Kg (62% of total production)

Water: 1,655,410 Kg (30% of total production)

[0]
[https://www.pnas.org/content/112/18/5649](https://www.pnas.org/content/112/18/5649)

[1] PDF:
[https://www.fda.gov/downloads/ForIndustry/UserFees/AnimalDru...](https://www.fda.gov/downloads/ForIndustry/UserFees/AnimalDrugUserFeeActADUFA/UCM628538.pdf)

~~~
r00fus
Thanks for your data and citations. That's what I was trying to get at. The
article needless conflated the two - which leaves readers wondering if they
are personally to blame when it's clearly Big Ag.

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natmaka
Those who know how Big Ag acts and nonetheless buy their products are to
blame.

Therefore most of us are to blame, especially considering indirect channels
(food served at work/school cafeteria, many/most restaurants...).

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solotronics
Well at least they will have very clean fish, right up until a hyper bacteria
evolves and strips all biological matter from the water.

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monieseee
If such a hyper bacteria were possible it would have happened a long time ago.
Bacteria must adapt and compete on many axes, there is no silver bullet. Don't
forget that antibiotics were invented by nature (penicillium).

~~~
wkearney99
But not delivered in anywhere near the same concentrations and across as many
different delivery systems. It's one thing for a natural bacteria or virus to
develop. It's another to have them artificially transported in ways which
nature could only dream about having. THAT's the bad thing.

