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The Antimicrobial Resistance–Water–Corporate Interface: Exploring the Connections Between Antimicrobials, Water, and Pollution
Summary
This perspective review explores how various industries contribute to antibiotic resistance through water pollution, including pharmaceutical manufacturing runoff, agricultural practices, and plastic and microplastic contamination. Researchers highlight that water systems serve as breeding grounds where resistant bacteria develop and spread, with microplastics acting as carriers for these harmful microorganisms. The study calls for corporate accountability and better regulation to address this growing public health threat.
Antibiotic resistance is a public health emergency, with ten million deaths estimated annually by the year 2050. Water systems are an important medium for the development and dissemination of antibiotic resistance from a variety of sources, explored in this perspective review. Hospital wastewater and wastewater systems more broadly are breeding grounds for antibiotic resistance because of the nature of their waste and how it is processed. Corporations from various sectors contribute to antibiotic resistance in many direct and indirect ways. Pharmaceutical factory runoff, agricultural antibiotic use, agricultural use of nitrogen fertilizers, heavy metal pollution, air pollution (atmospheric deposition, burning of oil and/or fossil fuels), plastic/microplastic pollution, and oil/petroleum spills/pollution have all been demonstrated to contribute to antibiotic resistance. Mitigation strategies to reduce these pathways to antibiotic resistance are discussed and future directions hypothesized.
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