A man covers his nose to keep out the stench from the polluted Iska Vagu stream in Patancheru, on the outskirts of Hyderabad, India, Friday, March 28, 2008. Indian factories that make lifesaving drugs swallowed by millions worldwide are creating the worst pharmaceutical pollution ever measured, spewing enough of one antibiotic into a stream each day to treat everyone living in Sweden for a work week. (AP Photo / Mahesh Kumar A)Synopsis by David Buchwalter, Ph.D. and Wendy Hessler

Levels of antibiotics measured in streams, lakes and well water near pharmaceutical factories in India are 100,000 to 1,000,000 times higher than levels measured in waters that receive sewage effluent in the US or China. Much of the world’s supply of  generic antibiotics is produced in the study area. These levels pose direct risks to human health via contaminated drinking water, and they may also foster conditions for pathogens to develop antibiotic resistance. Swedish scientists measured antibiotics in surface and groundwater at the true source of these materials – near drug production facilities that supply the majority of the world’s generic antibiotics. The researchers analyzed surface waters – a stream that receives outflow and two lakes that do not – and well water samples from six villages near Hyderabad, India, for 12 common antibiotics. These included ciproflaxin, enoacin, cetirizine, terbinafine, and citalopram. Samples were also collected from a water treatment plant that receives wastewater from 90 different drug manufacturing facilities. They found shockingly high concentrations of several antibiotics and other drugs – concentrations 105 to 106 fold higher than previously reported levels from the US. Drugs contaminated all of the wells tested. Some of the wells are currently used as drinking water sources for local villagers. The compounds ciproflaxin, enoacin, cetirizine, terbinafine, and citalopram were detected at less than1 micrograms per liter (ug/L) in several of the wells. High amounts of four antibiotics were measured in the lakes that do not take in wastewater from the sewage plant. The levels of ciprofloxacin (2.5 mg/L) and cetirizine (20 μg/L) in one of the lakes was higher than previously measured levels in the blood of people taking the medications, report the authors. This suggests there are other unknown sources – perhaps illegal dumping – of wastewater responsible for polluting the lakes. In addition, effluents from a wastewater treatment had concentrations of ciprofloxin of 14 milligrams per liter (mg/L) and cetirizine as high as 1.2 mg/L. These concentrations are approaching therapeutic doses (concentrations that would kill some microorganisms outright).  Concentration reported in the US range in the nanograms per liter (ng/L), which are one million fold less. …

Unprecedented levels of antibiotics pollute India’s water via Apocadocs