Un articolo di Nautilus spiega un aspetto del consumo di antibiotici che sta favorendo la comparsa di batteri resistenti: l’uso, più diffuso nei paesi poveri, delle acque nere in agricoltura.

One way in which antibiotic residues reach the environment is when people excrete them in their feces and urine, says Willem van Schaik, a specialist in microbiology and infection at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. And it’s not just the drugs that end up in the environment. The disease-causing germs hitch a ride on the antibiotics, and a portion of them are resistant to the drugs.

In poorer countries, more than 80 percent of sewage is discharged untreated into the environment. In Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, Blaise Bougnom, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Yaounde, has been piecing together one particular route for the sewage: human waste often goes directly into city canals, from where urban farmers take water to irrigate crops crucial for city dwellers’ vegetable supplies. Urban farming is widespread in poorer countries, with vegetables growing on roadsides, along drainage canals, in roundabouts and parks. It can provide 40 percent of a city’s food supply and up to 90 percent of its demand for vegetables.

Immagine da Flickr.