Air Pollution Linked To Rise in Antibiotic Resistance That Imperils Human Health (theguardian.com) 61
Air pollution is helping to drive a rise in antibiotic resistance that poses a significant threat to human health worldwide, a global study suggests. From a report: The analysis, using data from more than 100 countries spanning nearly two decades, indicates that increased air pollution is linked with rising antibiotic resistance across every country and continent. It also suggests the link between the two has strengthened over time, with increases in air pollution levels coinciding with larger rises in antibiotic resistance.
"Our analysis presents strong evidence that increasing levels of air pollution are associated with increased risk of antibiotic resistance," researchers from China and the UK wrote. "This analysis is the first to show how air pollution affects antibiotic resistance globally." Their findings are published in the Lancet Planetary Health journal. Antibiotic resistance is one of the fastest-growing threats to global health. It can affect people of any age in any country and is already killing 1.3 million people a year, according to estimates. The main drivers are still the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, which are used to treat infections. But the study suggests the problem is being worsened by rising levels of air pollution.
The study did not look at the science of why the two might be linked. Evidence suggests that particulate matter PM2.5 can contain antibiotic-resistant bacteria and resistance genes, which may be transferred between environments and inhaled directly by humans, the authors said. Air pollution is already the single largest environmental risk to public health. Long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with chronic conditions such as heart disease, asthma and lung cancer, reducing life expectancy. Short-term exposure to high pollution levels can cause coughing, wheezing and asthma attacks, and is leading to increased hospital and GP attendances worldwide.
"Our analysis presents strong evidence that increasing levels of air pollution are associated with increased risk of antibiotic resistance," researchers from China and the UK wrote. "This analysis is the first to show how air pollution affects antibiotic resistance globally." Their findings are published in the Lancet Planetary Health journal. Antibiotic resistance is one of the fastest-growing threats to global health. It can affect people of any age in any country and is already killing 1.3 million people a year, according to estimates. The main drivers are still the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, which are used to treat infections. But the study suggests the problem is being worsened by rising levels of air pollution.
The study did not look at the science of why the two might be linked. Evidence suggests that particulate matter PM2.5 can contain antibiotic-resistant bacteria and resistance genes, which may be transferred between environments and inhaled directly by humans, the authors said. Air pollution is already the single largest environmental risk to public health. Long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with chronic conditions such as heart disease, asthma and lung cancer, reducing life expectancy. Short-term exposure to high pollution levels can cause coughing, wheezing and asthma attacks, and is leading to increased hospital and GP attendances worldwide.
Medicine Fails (Score:3)
To cure what ails
But razor sails
Through all travails
Burma Shave
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Everybody, have fun tonight!
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In the realm of remedies found,
Medicines with power abound.
They ease our woes,
From head to toes,
Healing grace in each pill's mound.
In the heart's intricate dance,
Where rhythms can falter and prance,
Cardiac allies,
With skill and wise eyes,
Adjust beats in life's rhythmic trance.
When infection's dark forces encroach,
Antibiotics launch their approach,
They battle the germs,
Till health's light reaffirms,
And recovery's ship stays afloat.
With allergies causing a fuss,
Antihistamines quell the fuss,
They quiet the sne
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Obviously (Score:3)
I mean, air pollution is worse, and antibiotics are overused. There must be causality there, right?
No. Maybe air pollution is just worse and antibiotics are being overused causing resistance at the same time. That doesn't mean one has anything to do with the other.
Re:Obviously (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, air pollution is worse
That depends on where you live.
In America, air quality is way better than a generation ago when gasoline was leaded, emission standards didn't exist, and far more people burned trash in their backyards.
In much of the rest of the world, pollution is far worse now. I am currently in the Philippines, in the suburbs of Manila. I rinse the black crud out of my air filter at least once a week.
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There is no narrative.
It is just *news* which is probably wrong.
I would say: raising air pollution comes with raised standard of living *cough* *cough* and more usage of antibiotics.
There is hardly any thinkable reason how bacteria can develop resistance to certain antibiotics: besides usage/over usage/wrong discarding of such antibiotics.
I did not read the linked article, but I would not wonder if the original authors wrote somewhere: "funny coincidence" -aka- correlation, and the guys putting it up into t
Re: Obviously (Score:1)
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Not sure what you wanted to say.
Funilly enough industrial cattle farming (and other animals too like chicken) are mainly responsible for antibiotic resistance.
In countries where it is allowed to use them as grow hormones.
Guess which one is the biggest exporter of bacon in the world and Al's one golf the biggest cattle exporters.
No idea, as both hormone fed and antibiotics fed meat imports into the EU are forbidden. Thailand slaps a 15% tax (+7%) VAT on basically all imports, os I have no idea if the "bad gu
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May also be, rising air pollution causes more illness. And more illness causes more usage of antibiotics. And with more usage of antibiotics, we get germs that become more resistant to antibiotics.
Statistics is a wonderful subject, it can establish a *link* between farts and CMB radiation.
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May also be, rising air pollution causes more illness. And more illness causes more usage of antibiotics. Yeah, that is part of what I meant.
Re: Obviously (Score:2)
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Kumasta ka?
Mabuti.
Just on dusk, everyday, go outside, sweep up some leaves and litter and burn it.
I could live with that. I'd just shut my window for a couple of hours.
But I have one neighbor burning trash at 6 am, another at noon, and a few more in the evening. There is a stinky haze all day long.
I need to move outta Manila. I've heard Cebu is nice.
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Magandang araw! Ako'y isang AI na handang tumulong sa inyo. Paano ko kayo matutulungan ngayon?
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> In America, air quality is way better than a generation ago when gasoline was leaded, emission standards didn't exist, and far more people burned trash in their backyards.
Yeah, also makes me wonder that while PM 2.5 um mesures have seen decreases what's going on with PM 0.1
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
If they had NOTHING to do with each other we would not 'expect' to see greater antibiotic resistance in places with more air pollution.
Correlation is not causation, but its great reason to ask questions! The article proposes one explanation which is large particulate pollution might be a vector for transferring bacteria.
It could be something else too like, more air pollution means more inflamed tissues, that get infected more often and more antibiotics get deployed to treat that, which leads to more resistance. which would make the relationship more 'indirect' than causal, that is to say the air pollution isnt making the bacteria more antibiotic resistant but our own adaptation to it is.
Either way its interesting and worth studying.
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Do you really need to "study" why Greed, who has made trillions overprescribing antibiotics to contaminate a planet with, is trying to find anything else to blame as a scapegoat to avoid them losing even a single penny?
Like I really need to say some shit like "follow the money"...
Re: Obviously (Score:2)
If there was a relationship then antibiotic resistance would be decreasing in the United States as air pollution has decreased.
That logic fails here: air might have gotten better, but has it gotten below the threshold for antibiotic resistance to decrease?
When accelerating and I ease the throttle a little, will my car slow down? Not necessarily.
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Re: Obviously (Score:2)
The guy who's too afraid to associate his posts on a social network no one uses any more with even a throwaway identity is going to slap someone? Ok, kiddo.
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I mean, air pollution is worse, and antibiotics are overused. There must be causality there, right?
No. Maybe air pollution is just worse and antibiotics are being overused causing resistance at the same time. That doesn't mean one has anything to do with the other.
They may be able to link air pollution leading to antibiotics being prescribed more often for ailments actually caused by the air pollution, but nothing here indicates that anyone made that large of a logic leap. I would agree this seems a study with no link between cause/effect.
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I mean, air pollution is worse, and antibiotics are overused. There must be causality there, right?
No. Maybe air pollution is just worse and antibiotics are being overused causing resistance at the same time. That doesn't mean one has anything to do with the other.
One is related to the other. Greed profiting endlessly abusing antibiotic scripts needs a nice scapegoat to point fingers at to avoid anyone looking at the obvious. "Air pollution" is an easy scapegoat sold to the gullible masses and bought by the media to abuse properly as spin.
Increased levels of air pollution can create sickly people. Sickly people that visit doctors offices perhaps several times more often than the average healthy person would. Visting a doctors office that is more than likely goin
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PM2.5-class stuff is hyperinflamatory which is immunosuppressive which leads to less synergistic immune activity with antibiotics which allows a longer linger which lengthens the challenge-mutation evolutionary window.
OK, so one can draw a link. We need clean energy, stat, but the effect of overprescription is probably 2000x higher, so whack those moles first.
In the US the out-of-control Courts System ensures "defensive medicine" which means sacrificing Public Health to ensure Courts don't destroy physicia
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Ya, I'm sure that would never have occurred to the scientists. Maybe you could tell them? They'll be happy to believe you.
You know what drives most antibiotic resistance? (Score:2)
More nuclear power then. (Score:5, Informative)
Use of nuclear fission to produce energy means less pollution, less CO2, more reliable energy supply, and greater safety.
Anyone wish to provide data to the contrary?
Let us not forget the promise of lowered costs as the technology behind nuclear fission develops. We've already seen a handful of nuclear power plants built on time and on budget. We need only to keep that momentum going with more new nuclear power plants of similar designs be put in place to gain from that experience. With each iteration comes more lessons on how to improve the construction. With each iteration there's more people trained to do it again. Start construction on one reactor this year, then two a year later, then four, then eight, and so on.
In the USA we have the industrial capacity to start another nuclear power plant in the USA every week, and in six to eight years time bring one gigawatt of electric generation capacity online every week. Keep that pace for 50 years and we will have a fleet of nuclear power plants capable of providing the energy the USA needs for a century. It can't stop there though. After 50 years the nuclear power plants that where built will need a refuel/refit/repair cycle.
We know we can maintain this level of construction for nuclear power because the materials and people we use now for building fossil fuel plants can be repurposed for nuclear power.
There are many nuclear power plants all over the USA reaching their end of life. If we don't replace them with new nuclear power plants soon then we will face an energy shortage. To make up for lost fossil fuel production we need to grow our fleet of nuclear power plants well beyond what we've had in the past. On top of that we need nuclear power to desalination seawater into something we can drink, and synthesize fuels we can use for our car, tracks, trains, planes, and ships.
There was a plant to build one thousand gigawatt scale nuclear reactors in the USA to meet our energy needs. If we start now then it would take about 20 years for the first-of-a-kind power plants to come online. After that the time to build could easily be cut in half. Then it becomes a new fleet online every year, Since each project isn't going to start at the same time as all the others the added capacity seen to the grid would happen nearly every week.
There would be dozens of nuclear power plants under construction at a time meaning there's going to be more generating capacity added nearly every day.
This won't be intermittent power like with wind and solar. This power won't see price spikes from petroleum embargoes.
With over one thousand nuclear reactors producing power there will be enogh power to take on the worst the world could give us.
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Well apparently now we have to figure in the cost of superbugs and sicknesses?
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nukes don't scale
https://phys.org/news/2011-05-... [phys.org]
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All that crap has been debunked here over and over. The most recent nuke plant to come online in the US took well over 10 years to build and was $16 billion over budget.
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here we go again... and so we swap one limited supply item that is expensive to deal with for another one... I read the USA was the top uranium nation long ago and now only has a tiny bit left in a national park and today IMPORTS the stuff.
It takes about 15 years to build a new plant so how are we safely going to build all these plants in time? The next gen is always off in the future and if it did exist practically we'd probably take double the time to build the 1st one of it's kind. Plus it's crazy expen
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Depending on where it is placed, nuclear power can actually produce a lot of pollution. The main issue is where the fuel comes from, which is typically mining. Oh yes, we could develop new wonder reactors that recycle "spent" fuel, but they won't be commercially available for decades at the earliest.
Fortunately, if you look at the list of countries ranked by use of renewable energy, many developing nations appear near the top. That's because renewable energy is clean and cheap, and they can develop their gr
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Yeah, you're right. None.
More Fuck-You Finger Pointing. (Score:2)
We live in a world infected with medical Greed feeding off every single prescription.
Fat chance we should blindly believe those making trillions off selling antibiotics, have nothing to do with this problem. Damn good chance we should believe Greed will lie, cheat, lobby, and steal to blame anything and everything but themselves known as The Source.
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We live in a world infected with medical Greed feeding off every single prescription.
We live in a world where Mommy demands antibiotics every time little Timmy or Suzy gets the sniffles.
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We live in a world infected with medical Greed feeding off every single prescription.
We live in a world where Mommy demands antibiotics every time little Timmy or Suzy gets the sniffles.
We live in a world where the fucking moron with the medical degree is listening to "Mommy" regarding prescription advice.
If that's not the case, then start blaming the actual problem. Sponsored doctors.
Mechanism please (Score:2)
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You shouldn't be allowed to write stuff like this without proposing some kind of mechanism which explains a causal relationship. Well, actually, you can write anything you want to. It's just that it's kind of useless. Maybe you shouldn't read stuff like this.
The world we live in today highlights the fact that nothing is truly useless. Someone is creating content for a reason.
That reason used to be to inform and educate. Now the reason is create profit, by any lie necessary.
Linked usually means correlation (Score:2)
The paper does not describe this:
"For this global analysis, data on multiple potential predictors (ie, air pollution, antibiotic use, sanitation services, economics, health expenditure, population, education, climate, year, and region) were collected in 116 countries from 2000 to 2018 to estimate the effect of PM2·5 on antibiotic resistance via univariate and multivariable analysis"
"Linked with" you mean "as they modernize"? (Score:2)
One doesn't cause the other. Nor do they have the same chemical effect.
[Read the crap above]
Weaker people are more likely to get sick. People who live in pollution will get sick. You can't know anything about bacteria itself... you're just reporting how many people were sick. And connecting that to pollution, which we already know.
Zero environments are 100% untouched. Everything is impacted by what is happening elsewhere (trace amounts of antibiotics being spread for instance). You're not going to be
Oh bullshit (Score:1)
Causes of Antibiotic Resistance (Score:1)
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Total BS (Score:1)
The study didnt look at the science of how they are linked.
Thus this is merely a correlation, and we all know that corellation does not equal causation.
Just because AB rsistance has increased and so have certain types of pollution (which is actually false but we will assume some types have), does not mean they are linked at all. Inflation has also gone up, yet nobody says that air pollution has increased interest rates or food prices!
Antibiotic resistance is driven by the over use of antibiotics to treat n
How is bacteria surviving the fire? (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be more likely that the pollutants make people more susceptible to infection, and that the use of antibiotics to treat those infections is what is giving them the opportunity to build resistance? At the least, it sure makes more sense than bacteria thriving in diesel exhaust.
It's nice to see awareness increasing (Score:2)
Slashdotters are questioning "the science" a lot more these days, and it's refreshing. It's nice to see what are considered otherwise intelligent people realizing we should not necessarily be trusting mainstream opinions just because attached to it is the word "science."
contrradictory (Score:2)
"This analysis is the first to show how air pollution affects antibiotic resistance globally"
"The study did not look at the science of why the two might be linked."