Stream in india has record high levels of drugs | www.azstarnet.com ®

Stream in India has record high levels of drugs | www.azstarnet.com ® Stream in India has record high levels of drugs
By Margie Mason
PATANCHERU, India — When researchers analyzed vials of treated wastewater taken from a plant where about 90Indian drug factories dump their residues, they were shocked. Enough of a single, powerful antibiotic was beingspewed into one stream each day to treat every person in a city of 90,000.
And it wasn't just ciprofloxacin being detected. The supposedly cleaned water was a floating medicine cabinet — asoup of 21 active pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generics for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronicliver ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments. Half of the drugs measured at the highest levels ofpharmaceuticals ever detected in the environment, researchers say.
Those Indian factories produce drugs for much of the world, including many Americans. The result: Some of India'spoor are unwittingly consuming an array of chemicals that may be harmful, and could lead to the proliferation ofdrug-resistant bacteria.
"If you take a bath there, then you have all the antibiotics you need for treatment," said chemist Klaus Kuemmererat the University of Freiburg Medical Center in Germany, an expert on drug resistance in the environment who didnot participate in the research. "If you just swallow a few gasps of water, you're treated for everything. Thequestion is for how long?" Unprecedented results
Last year, The Associated Press reported that trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals had been found in drinking
water provided to at least 46 million Americans. But the wastewater downstream from the Indian plants contained
150 times the highest levels detected in the United States.
At first, Joakim Larsson, an environmental scientist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, questioned whether100 pounds a day of ciprofloxacin could really be running into the Iska Vagu stream. He was so baffled by theunprecedented results he sent the samples to a second lab for independent analysis.
When those reports came back with similarly record-high levels, Larsson knew he was looking at a potentiallyserious situation. After all, some villagers fish in the stream's tributaries, while others drink from wells nearby.
Livestock also depend on these watering holes.
Some locals long believed drugs were seeping into their drinking water, and new data from Larsson's studypresented at a U.S. scientific conference in November confirmed their suspicions. Ciprofloxacin, the antibiotic, andthe popular antihistamine cetirizine had the highest levels in the wells of six villages tested. Both drugs measuredfar below a human dose, but the results were still alarming.
"We don't have any other source, so we're drinking it," said R. Durgamma, a mother of four, sitting on the steps ofher crude mud home a few miles downstream from the treatment plant. High drug concentrations were recentlyfound in her well water. "When the local leaders come, we offer them water and they won't take it." An increasing concern
Pharmaceutical contamination is an emerging concern worldwide. In its series of articles, AP documented the
commonplace presence of minute concentrations of pharmaceuticals in U.S. drinking water supplies. The AP also
file:///Users/rathmanr/Desktop/Biology%20Week%204/Stream%20in%20I…h%20levels%20of%20drugs%20%7C%20www.azstarnet.com%20®.webarchive Stream in India has record high levels of drugs | www.azstarnet.com ® found that trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals were almost ubiquitous in rivers, lakes and streams.
The medicines are excreted without being fully metabolized by people who take them, while hospitals and long-term-care facilities annually flush millions of pounds of unused pills down the drain. Until Larsson's research, therewas consensus among researchers that drug makers weren't a source.
The consequences of the India studies are worrisome.
As the AP reported last year, researchers are finding that human cells fail to grow normally in the laboratory whenexposed to trace concentrations of certain pharmaceuticals. Some waterborne drugs also promote antibiotic-resistant germs, especially when — as in India — they are mixed with bacteria in human sewage. Even extremelydiluted concentrations of drug residues harm the reproductive systems of fish, frogs and other aquatic species inthe wild.
In the India research, tadpoles exposed to water from the treatment plant that had been diluted 500 times werenonetheless 40 percent smaller than those growing in clean water.
Far-reaching impact
The discovery of this contamination raises two key issues for researchers and policymakers: the amount of pollution
and its source. Experts say one of the biggest concerns for humans is whether the discharge from the wastewater
treatment facility is spawning drug resistance.
"Not only is there the danger of antibiotic-resistant bacteria evolving; the entire biological food web could beaffected," said Stan Cox, senior scientist at the Land Institute, a non-profit agriculture research center in Salina,Kan. Cox has studied and written about pharmaceutical pollution in Patancheru. "If Cipro is so widespread, it islikely that other drugs are out in the environment and getting into people's bodies." Before Larsson's team tested the water at Patancheru Enviro Tech Ltd. plant, researchers largely attributed thesource of drugs in water to their use, rather than their manufacture.
In the United States, the EPA says there are "well defined and controlled" limits to the amount of pharmaceuticalwaste emitted by drug makers.
India's environmental protections are being met at Patancheru, says Rajeshwar Tiwari, who heads the area'spollution control board. And while he says regulations have tightened since Larsson's initial research, screening forpharmaceutical residue at the end of the treatment process is not required.
Factories in the United States report on releases of 22 active pharmaceutical ingredients, the AP found by analyzingEPA data. But many more drugs have been discovered in domestic drinking water.
Possibly complicating the situation, Larsson's team also found high drug concentration levels in lakes upstreamfrom the treatment plant, indicating potential illegal dumping — an issue both Indian pollution officials and the drugindustry acknowledge has been a past problem, but one they say is much less frequent now.
M. Narayana Reddy, president of India's Bulk Drug Manufacturers Association, disputes Larsson's initial results. "Ihave challenged it," he said. "It is the wrong information provided by some research person." Reddy acknowledged the region is polluted but said that the contamination came from untreated human excrementand past industry abuses. He and pollution control officials also say villagers are supposed to drink clean waterpiped in from the city or hauled in by tankers — water a court ordered industry to provide. But locals complain ofinsufficient supplies, and some say they are forced to use wells.
Larsson's research has created a stir among environmental experts, and his findings are widely accepted in thescientific community.
"That's really quite an incredible and disturbing level," said Renee Sharp, senior analyst at the Washington-basedEnvironmental Working Group. "It's absolutely the last thing you would ever want to see when you're talking aboutthe rise of antibiotic bacterial resistance in the world." A matter of resistance
file:///Users/rathmanr/Desktop/Biology%20Week%204/Stream%20in%20I…h%20levels%20of%20drugs%20%7C%20www.azstarnet.com%20®.webarchive Stream in India has record high levels of drugs | www.azstarnet.com ® The more bacteria are exposed to a drug, the more likely that bacteria will mutate in a way that renders the drugineffective. Such resistant bacteria can then possibly infect others who spread the bugs as they travel. Ciprofloxacinwas once considered a powerful antibiotic of last resort, used to treat especially tenacious infections. But in recentyears many bacteria have developed resistance to the drug, leaving it significantly less effective.
"We are using these drugs, and the disease is not being cured — there is resistance going on there," said Dr. A.
Kishan Rao, a physician and environmental activist who has treated people for more than 30 years near the drugfactories. He says he worries most about the long-term effects on his patients potentially being exposed to constantlow levels of drugs.
Patancheru became a hub for largely unregulated chemical and drug factories in the 1980s, creating what one localnewspaper has termed an "ecological sacrifice zone" with its waste. Since then, India has become one of theworld's leading exporters of pharmaceuticals, and the United States — which spent $1.4 billion on Indian-madedrugs in 2007 — is its largest customer.
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