River Danube is Europe’s most polluted stream

The concentration level of antibiotics used in animal husbandry is much higher than the permitted, which can cause serious problems.

More antibiotics – more resistant strains of bacteria

According to a global study done in the issue, the concentration level of antibiotics in many of the world’s biggest rivers exceeds the threshold – g7.hu reported. A team of experts analysed the water in 72 countries and 711 places and detected such materials in 2/3rd of the test sites. In fact, antibiotics are essential in curing bacterial infections. However, their overuse can result in

more and more resistant strains

which, finally, may cause a global health emergency situation.

Antibiotics are not only used to heal humans but they are also critical in the animal husbandry, so they can easily get out into the rivers, for example, if wastewater and fertilisers are not treated properly.

If the concentration level of more kinds of antibiotics is constantly high in a river, the chance for evolving new and more resistant bacteria strains is much higher. This is because such drugs demolish all kinds of bacteria that do not possess resistant genes. The latter are less viable in a normal environment; thus, there are not many of them. However, if there are many kinds of

antibiotics destroying their competitors they can multiply very quickly.

The same happens in the case of fungicides.

Even the Thames is polluted badly

“A lot of the resistance genes we see in human pathogens originated from environmental bacteria” – Prof William Gaze, a microbial ecologist at the University of Exeter who studies antimicrobial resistance but was not involved in the study, said to The Guardian. The paper highlighted that, according to the United Nations, the rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a global health emergency that could kill 10 million people by 2050.