As anyone who ’s ever possess a favored fish or gone to a public swim puddle know , chlorine is commonly used to disinfect water . Ironically , when it come in to sewage treatment , it may be doing just the opposite .
At wastewater treatment plants , atomic number 17 is used to eliminate both harmful bacteria and pharmaceutical residues , including antibiotics . But researchpresented todayat the yearly meeting of theAmerican Chemical Societyshows how Cl treatment , rather than carry off drug residual , may encourage the establishment of sword - new antibiotics . Upon re - put down the environs , these new drugs can , in theory , promote the growth of antibiotic resistant bacterium . Well , poop .
The drill of disinfecting water with chlorine hail from an era when public consumption of prescription drugs — including antibiotics — was much lower . But our now - drug - laden wastefulness may require a dissimilar treatment . According to lead researcher Olya Keen at the University of North Carolina Charlotte :
“ care for wastewater is one of the major sources of pharmaceuticals and antibiotics in the environment . effluent treatment quickness were not design to remove these drugs . The molecules are typically very unchanging and do not easily get biodegraded . rather , most just pass through the treatment facility and into the aquatic environment . ”
flush it to remove drugs is one thing , but disturbingly , treatment facilities that use Cl may also further the formation of new antibiotics . In the lab , Keen exposed doxycycline — an antibiotic drug used to treat everything from acne to malaria — to chlorine . She describes her finding in the study ’s abstract :
The work evaluated the changes in the antibacterial activity of the products that work in the response between Vibramycin and atomic number 17 using antibiotic resistance assays . The resultant showed that some of the translation product have antibiotic property . The products of chlorination were also examined … and several chlorinated product were detected . These transformation product may still choose for antibiotic immune micro - being in the environment even in the absence of the parent Vibramycin molecule . This indicate that re - evaluation of sewer water disinfection practices may be ask .
Antibiotic resistance is now seriouspublic health problem ; one that ’s been fuel by the overuse consumption ofantibiotics in animal agriculture . We already knew that antibiotic - resistant bacterium can make their way from factory farms to urban centers via dirt ball and waterway . The new study suggests another avenue by which pernicious , drug - repellent bugs might be accumulating in the environment .
All the more understanding that we involve to get serious aboutmining the territory for newfangled drugs . [ American Chemical Society ]
Top image via Shutterstock
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