© 2024
NPR News, Colorado Stories
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
KUNC is among the founding partners of the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration of public media stations that serve the Western states of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Majority Of Global Rivers Analyzed In Recent Study Had Antibiotics In Them

Collecting a sample for the study in Kazakhstan
Global Monitoring of Pharmaceuticals Project
Collecting a sample for the study in Kazakhstan

A recent study of rivers across 72 countries found that waterways are often contaminated with antibiotics, including here in the Mountain West.

John Wilkinson, a researcher at the University of York in the UK, coordinated the study and presented it for the first time this week at an in Helsinki. He says two-thirds of the 165 rivers they sampled had antibiotics flowing in them.

“The concentrations of these antibiotics were far above levels that we might suspect,” Wilkinson said.

Places in Africa and Asia where sewage is unregulated were the worst. But Wilkinson said contamination can also escape from regulated sewage treatment plants here in North America and in Europe. Another culprit is runoff from factory farms where antibiotics are used.

An electronics waste site in Accra, Ghana
Credit Global Monitoring of Pharmaceuticals Project
/
Global Monitoring of Pharmaceuticals Project
An electronics waste site in Accra, Ghana

Wilkinson said they found antibiotics in several Colorado rivers.  

They weren’t high levels, but “small concentrations of the antibiotics are more of a contributing factor than we originally thought in perpetuating this problem,” Wilkinson said.

He’s referring to the increasing , a crisis the United Nations recently warned could cause as many as 10 million deaths a year by 2050.

This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUER in Salt Lake City, and KRCC and KUNC in Colorado.

Copyright 2020 91.5 KRCC. To see more, visit .

Ali Budner is KRCC's reporter for the Mountain West News Bureau, a journalism collaborative that unites six stations across the Mountain West, including stations in Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Montana to better serve the people of the region. The project focuses its reporting on topic areas including issues of land and water, growth, politics, and Western culture and heritage.
Related Content