Evaluation of the impact on the freshwater environment of antimicrobials used in livestock mass treatments

Short description:

Ecotoxicity testing of veterinary antimicrobials detected in agricultural soils and/or surrounding waters because of intensive farming activities. Drugs assayed, alone and in combination, on aquatic model organisms from various trophic levels. Computation of the Combination Index (CI) for the evaluation of synergistic effects. Measurement of various sublethal effects: growth inhibition (algae, plants), disturbance of swimming activity (fish, daphnids), teratogenic effects and transgenerational toxicity (D. magna). Derivation of Predicted No Effect Concentrations and Risk Quotient for the freshwater environment. Evaluation of the resistance potential of bacterial communities in samples from farms where antimicrobial residues have been detected in soil and/or surrounding waters. A culture independent approach (i.e. metagenomics) will be employed. Detection of antimicrobial resistance genes, using PCR.

Five publications related to the Research Topic for the interview:

  1. Chapman, P., M.; Fairbrother, A.; Brown, D., 1998. A critical evaluation of safety (uncertainty) factors for ecological risk assessment. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 17(1): 99-108.
  2. Boxall, A.B., 2004. The environmental side effects of medication. EMBO reports, 5(12), 1110-1116.
  3. Dietrich, S., Ploessl, F., Bracher, F., Laforsch, C., 2010. Single and combined toxicity of pharmaceuticals at environmentally relevant concentrations in Daphnia magna - A multigenerational study. Chemosphere, 79(1), 60–6.
  4. Wenner Moyer, M., 2016. The Looming Threat of Factory-Farm Superbugs. Scientific American, 315 (6), 70-79.
  5. Manaia, C.M., 2017. Assessing the Risk of Antibiotic Resistance Transmission from the Environment to Humans: Non-Direct Proportionality Between Abundance and Risk. Trends in Microbiology, 25 (3), 173-181.