Pharmaceutical residues in fresh water pose growing environmental risk
Over the past 20 years, concentrations of pharmaceuticals have increased in freshwater sources all over the world, as research by environmental experts at Radboud University revealed.
Levels of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin have reached the point of potentially causing damaging ecological effects. The research is the first to examine the risks of two particular medicines in global freshwater sources, and is being published in Environmental Research Letters on February 22nd, sciencedaily.com wrote.
“The study calls for more widespread data gathering to measure the problem around the world.”
“Getting an accurate picture of the environmental risks of pharmaceuticals around the world depends on the availability of data, which is limited,” said Rik Oldenkamp, lead author of the article.
“It’s true that there are models, such as the epie model, which can give detailed predictions of pharmaceutical concentrations in the environment, but these are often only applicable to places where we already have a lot of information, such as rivers in Europe.”
The new model developed by the researchers, which builds on an existing model with a lower resolution, makes it possible to
The far-flung Marshall Islands needs to raise its islands if it is to avoid being drowned by rising sea levels, President Hilda Heine warned.
Marshall Islands is an island country and a United States associated state near the equator in the Pacific Ocean, slightly west of the International Date Line.
Plans are underway for national talks on which of the 1,156 islands, scattered over 29 coral atolls, can be elevated in a dramatic intervention to ensure safety on the islands, phys.org wrote.
“Raising our islands is a daunting task but one that must be done,” Heine said in an interview with the Marshall Islands Journal.
“We need the political will, and especially traditional leaders’ commitment, to see this through.
“We must come together as a nation as this is about our survival as a nation, as a people and as a culture.”
A ‘climate crisis’ policy document prepared by the office of the chief secretary painted a bleak outlook for the Pacific Ocean archipelago with a population of 55,000.
It cited an increasing frequency of “inundation events, severe droughts, coral bleaching events, and... looking forward, there is very good reason to come up with worldwide predictions for individual ecoregions.
For the two pharmaceuticals investigated in the study — carbamazepine, an anti-epileptic drug, and ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic — the environmental risks were found to be 10 to 20 times higher in 2015 than in 1995. The increased human use of ciprofloxacin was found to have a particularly high impact globally.
“The concentrations of this antibiotic can be harmful for bacteria in the water, and these bacteria in turn play an important role in various nutrient cycles,” said Oldenkamp.
“Antibiotics can also have a believe that conditions and prospects for survival will only worsen”.
Most of the islands are less than two meters (6.5 feet) above sea level and the government believes physically raising negative impact on the effectiveness of bacteria colonies used in wastewater treatment.”
Antibiotic resistance has been on the agenda of the World the islands was the only way to save the Marshall Islands from extinction.
They have not yet outlined specifics of how this would be achieved expect to have plans formulated by the end of the Health Organization (WHO) and UN General Assembly for a few years now.
“Generally, it’s seen as a problem for the health sector, as
year.
In the meantime, they are keeping a close watch on the ambitious City of Hope project on an artificial island in the Maldives as a viable option.
To lay the foundations of the city — which is expected to accommodate 130,000 people when completed in 2023 — sand is being pumped onto reefs from surrounding atolls and it is being fortified with walls three meters above sea level, which will make it higher than the tallest natural island in the Maldives.
“Whatever approach is selected, it will involve selecting islands to raise, add to, or build upon” Heine said.
“All Marshallese stakeholders, but especially traditional landowners, need to be at the forefront of this discussion if we are ever going to move the conversation forward.”
The Marshall Islands also aims to increase engagement with the three other all-atoll nations —Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Maldives — on climate issues.
“As a group, the atoll nations need to come together to formulate their unique concerns and develop their positions and plans and identify financial needs related to climate impacts,” said Heine, who chairs the Coalition of Atoll Nations Against Climate Change. resistant bacteria can be spread within hospitals or through livestock,” said Oldenkamp.
“But there’s little awareness of the role of the environment in this problem, even though it becomes increasingly clear that the environment functions as a source of resistance for various pathogens.”
“Our model predicts a relatively high environmental risk for ecoregions in densely populated and dry areas such as the Middle East, yet those are precisely the areas where there is little data on pharmaceutical use and concentrations in surface waters,” said Oldenkamp.
The researchers predicted human pharmaceutical consumption in these areas using regression models based on consumption in other countries, along with socio-economic and demographic information, and linked this to information related to other factors such as water sources and the number of people with access to wastewater treatment.
“Our model shows a particular need for new data in these types of areas,” said Oldenkamp. “The model is really a starting point for creating an insight into the environmental risks posed by pharmaceuticals all over the world.”