Guest guest Posted April 24, 2009 Report Share Posted April 24, 2009 full article here - http://www.theecologist.org/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=2365 Wishing you all in India a good team on this, oh my lots of work to do everywhere! Best - Ysha Joakim Larsson, an associate professor at Gothenburg University, Sweden, has, over a number of years, tested river water at the pharmaceutical industry zone of Patancheru, near Hyderabad, central India. His recent report, published in the journal Nature in February 2009, revealed the presence of unprecedented levels of drugs. Larsson's team found that the plant discharges an estimated 45kg of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin in one day, equivalent to five times the daily consumption of Sweden. Water from 90 Indian pharmaceutical factories goes through a water-treatment plant before discharge into the river, but Larsson's data showed that the supposedly cleaned water was a soup of 21 different active pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generic (i.e. non-branded) drugs for the treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression, gonorrhoea, ulcers and other ailments. Half of the drugs measured at the highest levels ever detected in the environment. ............ Larsson's study found that ciprofloxacin and the popular antihistamine cetirizine were found in the highest levels in the wells of six nearby villages where local residents have no choice but to drink the contaminated water. Such concentrations of riverborne antibiotics effectively provide a training school where bacteria can learn how to fight them – presenting the risk of new drug-resistant bacteria strains becoming pandemic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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