Antibiotics, Rivers and PFAs

There’s a new warning about PFAs, the group of more than 4700 chemicals used for industrial and food production and known to be harmful to health including cancer. In nearly half the meat and fish tested levels could be as high as twice the recommended levels, and therefore dangerous. They were also found in extremely high levels in items such as chocolate cake. PFAs are used in things like non-stick cookware, packaging, Styrofoam and their wide use means that they are now in the blood of just about all Americans and responsible for  contaminating the drinking water of at least 16 million people.

In another study, this one global, studying the rivers of the world, high levels of antibiotics were found. In every continent, the rivers tested exceed the levels safe for humans.  Rivers affect soil, their waters leak affecting things like sewage treatment plants which directly or indirectly affect humans. This at a time when there is already a crisis about antibiotics resistance, something that can have wide repercussions in the treatment of many illnesses. And further such high antibiotic levels in rivers such as the Thames and the Danube, affect all the organisms and creatures living within them.

It’s a distressing, troubling picture in an era when the current US  administration is not addressing these issues and developing countries do not have the technological and financial means to undertake measures such as the removal the antibiotics from their rivers. But because knowledge is still power, an issue of this magnitude must come to the foreground and we must each do what we can.

Antibiotic Resistance and Typhoid

It’s hard to realize that typhoid in Pakistan can impact us, but it’s much more likely than we may like. There’s an epidemic in 14 districts there, some 850 cases of typhoid which have been spreading since 2016. The problem is that the particular strain is mostly resistant to five different kinds of antibiotics. And further that strain is expected to disseminate globally. An oral antibiotic azythromycin is hoped to help, the last to be tried. If it fails, typhoid could be untreatable. So the issue is no longer about typhoid, but about antibiotic resistance. That means as far as typhoid is concerned we would have to return to the pre antibiotic era, and that would involve a very high mortality rate. As it is 21 million people suffer from typhoid each year and 161,000 already die of it. A hope for containing this epidemic lies in a vaccination campaign—indirectly making the case for the importance of vaccination. Continue reading “Antibiotic Resistance and Typhoid”