Antibiotic-resistance is an increasingly urgent topic, one that is typically associated with the overuse of antibiotics in the healthcare industry and agricultural animal production. However, new research from the University of Georgia explores an additional contributor to this phenomena - environmental contaminants.

Ecologists with the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and the Odum School of Ecology, looked at a site in South Carolina near the Savannah River that had been used to produce materials found in nuclear weapons. The site had been closed to the public in the early 1950's and had received little to no known input from residential and agricultural wastewater, a potential source of antibiotic waste. Instead, certain streams had been entirely contained in the site and had been exposed to legacy waste, including metals such as cadmium and mercury.

The researchers found that when bacteria from streams contaminated with legacy waste were exposed to antibiotics, over 95% of the samples were resistant to 10 or more of the 23 antibiotics. Of the six surrounding pristine streams, bacteria were responsive to the antibiotics given. The results have been published in the November 2015 issue of Environmental Microbiology.

Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) is a long time advocate of reducing the use of mercury, a neurotoxin, in the healthcare industry, having co-lead global efforts with the World Health Organization and other partners. HCWH is also pushing for PVC free products whenever possible, for which cadmium is a stabilizer. These two heavy metals are addressed in three of the four goals for the Healthier Hospitals Safer Chemicals Challenge.

[Source: Science Daily]