Drug Waste Creates Disaster Zone in Andhra
The
Times of
27 Jan 2009
MARGIE MASON
PATANCHERU: When researchers analyzed vials of treated wastewater from a
plant where about 90 Indian drug factories dump their residues, they were
shocked.
Powerful antibiotic was being spewed into one stream each
day to treat every person in a city of 90,000.
And it's not just ciprofloxacin. The supposedly cleaned water was a floating
soup of 21 different active
pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generics for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver
ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments. It is the highest
levels of pharmaceuticals ever detected in the environment, researchers say.
These factories, located on NH-9, just 28km from
"If you take a bath there, then you have all the antibiotics you need for
treatment," said chemist Klaus Kuemmerer, a
German exper t
on drug resistance in the environment. "If you just swallow a few gasps of
water, you're treated for everything. The question is ― for how
long?"
"We don't have any other source, so we're drinking it," said R Durgamma, a mother of four, sitting on the steps of her mud
home, a few miles downstream from the Patancheru
treatment plant. High drug concentrations were recently found in her well
water.
"When the local leaders come, we offer them water and they won't take
it."
Patancheru became a hub for largely unregulated
chemical and drug factories in the 1980s, creating what is described locally as
an "ecological sacrifice zone" with its pharmaceutical
waste. Since then,
Last year, it was reported that trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals had
been found in drinking water provided to at least 46 million Americans. But the
wastewater downstream from the Indian plants contained 150 times the highest
levels detected in the
Some locals long believed drugs were seeping into their drinking water, and new
data from the study by Joakim Larsson, an
environmental scientist at the
Ciprofloxacin, the antibiotic, and the popular antihistamine
cetirizine had the highest levels in the wells of six
villages tested. Both drugs measured far below a human dose, but the results
were still alarming.
The consequences of the
Researchers are finding that human cells fail to grow
normally in the laboratory
when exposed to trace concentrations of certain pharmaceuticals. Some
waterborne drugs also promote antibiotic-resistant germs, especially when, as
in
The discovery of this contamination raises two key issues for researchers and
policy makers: the amount of pollution and its source. Experts say one of the
biggest concerns for humans is whether the discharge from the wastewater
treatment facility is spawning drug resistance.
"Environmental protections are being met at Patancheru,"
says Rajeshwar Tiwari, who
heads the area's pollution control board. And while he says regulations have
tightened since Larsson's initial research, screening for pharmaceutical
residue at the end of the treatment process is not required.
Possibly complicating the situation, Larsson's team also found high drug
concentration levels in lak es upstream from the treatment plant, indicating potential illegal
dumping ― an issue both Indian pollution officials and the drug industry
acknowledge has been a past problem, but they say is practised
much less now.
"I'll tell you, I've never seen concentrations this high before. And they
definitely ... are having some biological impact, at least in the
effluent," said Dan Schlenk, an ecotoxicologist from the University of California,
Riverside, who was not involved in the
And even though the levels recently found in village wells were much lower than
the wastewater readings, someone drinking regularly from the worst-affected
reservoirs would receive more than two full doses of an antihistamine
in a year.
"Who has a responsibility for a polluted environment when the
M Narayana Reddy, president of
Reddy acknowledged the region is polluted, but said that the contamination came
from untreated human excrement and past industry abuses. He echoed pollution
control officials, saying villagers are supposed to drink clean water piped in
from the city or hauled in by tankers which a court ordered the industry to
provide. But locals complain of insufficient supplies and some say they are
forced to use wells.
"We are using these drugs (traces of which are found in water here), and
the disease is not being cured. There is resistance going on there," said
Dr A Kishan Rao, a medical
doctor and environmental activist who has treated people for more than 30 years
near the drug factories. He says he worries most about the long-term effects on
his patients potentially being exposed to constant low levels of drugs. And
then there's the variety, the mixture of drugs that aren't supposed to
interact. No one knows what effects that could cause.
"It's a global concern," he said. "European countries and the
A spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America,
representing major
At the Patancheru water treatment plant, the process
is outdated, with wastewater from the 90 bulk drug makers trucked to the plant
and poured into a cistern. Solids are filtered out, then
raw sewage is added to biologically break down the chemicals. The wastewater,
which has been clarified but is still contaminated, is dumped into the Iska Vagu stream that runs into
the Nakkavagu and Manjira,
and eventually into the
"I'm frustrated. We have told them so many times about this problem, but
nobody does anything," said Syed Bashir Ahmed, 80, casting a makeshift fishing pole while
crouched in tall grass along the river bank near the bulk drug factories.
"The poor are helpless. What can we do?"
Margie Mason is the AP Medical Writer.