'Drugmakers pumping antibiotics into aquatic system of Hyderabad'

The unabated and unchecked release of effluents from bulk drug manufactures in the Hyderabad industrial belt has resulted in accumulation of antibiotics in the aquatic system.

This is 1,000 times higher than any developed countries.

The presence of antibiotics that could cause drug resistance has created panic among citizens. A recent study published by Ritu Gothwal, a research scholar at the Civil Engineering department of the Kandi based Indian Institute of Technology here along with faculty member A Sashidhar, found Ciprofloxacin in highest concentrations at almost all sites under their study, among the seven fluoroquinolones (ciprofloxacin, lomefloxacin, ofloxacin, norflaxacin, enrofloxacin, pefloxacin, and difloxacin).

While their presence is low in upstream of the Musi river before entering the city and after confluence with Krishna river, high concentrations were observed in the urbanised
areas of Hyderabad.

The study says that bulk drug manufacturers are monitoring only conventional pollution parameters such as chemical oxygen demand and biochemical oxygen demand before disposing the effluent, and there is no check on the amount of drugs in it. Even the domestic sewage treatment plants and effluent treatment plants are not equipped to remove antibiotics. Studies in 2007 also reported high concentrations of ciprofloxacin, up to 31,000 μg=L. The treated effluent is mixed with domestic sewage at Amberpet wastewater treatment plant and then drained into the Musi river.

There is a worldwide environmental health concern about the presence of antibiotics in domestic sewage, because biosolids are usually dense with bacterial population and they act as taxonomic barriers to the horizontal transfer of genetic material. “Thus, wastewater treatment plants are considered hot spots for the spread of antibiotic resistant genes in the local environment,” the study says.