Fwd: swine antibiotics in groundwater

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" Louise "

swine antibiotics in groundwater

Thu, 15 Apr 2004 15:19:22 -0400

 

April 15, 2004

 

Methods detects trace levels of swine antibiotics in groundwater -

University of Minnesota

[Copyright © 2004]

 

NewsRxBiotech via NewsEdge Corporation : 2004 APR 14 - (NewsRx.com &

NewsRx.net) -- Scientists from the department of soil, water and

climate at University of Minnesota have developed a simple method to

quantify two types of antibiotics in animal manures, and surface and

ground waters.

 

Chlortetracycline and tylosin antibiotics are commonly used for growth

promotion in swine production. In general, as much as 90% of

antibiotics fed to food animals are excreted unchanged in animal feces

and urine. Researcher Kudlip Kumar explained that these animal wastes

when applied to fields present a potential for the spread of

antibiotics in the environment via nonpoint source pollution.

 

According to Kumar, there is not much information about the

concentration of various antibiotics in manure or surface and ground

waters, probably due to lack of simple methods to analyze these

antibiotics at very low concentrations in various environmental

samples.

 

In this study, the researchers developed a simple method for

ultra-trace determination of chlortetracycline and tylosin antibiotics.

Tests of a few swine manure samples showed that they contained as high

as 7.9 mg/L chlortetracycline and 5.2 mg/L tylosin. The method

developed by these researchers is very sensitive and can pick up

antibiotics in surface or ground waters at parts-per-billion levels.

The study is published in the Journal of Environmental Quality.

 

This study was part of the research project led by Satish Gupta on

fate and transport of manure applied antibiotics on land. In this

project, Gupta and his team quantified the extent of antibiotics losses

in rainfall and snowmelt runoff as well as through drainage from manure

applied lands. There is an increasing concern that subtherapeutic

feeding of antibiotics in animal agriculture is increasing microbial

resistance in the environment. Very small amounts of antibiotics move

in solution form and thus this new measuring method is highly useful in

quantifying these trace amount of antibiotics in aquatic environment.

 

Gupta said that small amounts of antibiotics are generally not toxic to

plants and aquatic life, but on repeated manure application there is

some potential for increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the

environment. This is another facet that Gupta and his team are

quantifying (Kumar K, Thompson A, Singh AK, et al., Enzyme-linked

immunosorbent assay for ultratrace determination of antibiotics in

aqueous samples. J Environ Qual, 2004;33(1):250-6).

 

This article was prepared by Biotech Week editors from staff and other

reports. Copyright 2004, Biotech Week via NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net. .end

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