Advocates for public health and farmworker safety are calling on the EPA to ban medically important antimicrobials in pesticides. The petition, organized by the Center for Biological Diversity and 9 other organizations, urges the EPA to prohibit the use of pesticides that contain streptomycin and oxytetracycline, the two most frequently used antibiotics in pesticides. Use of antibiotics in pesticides allows the germs they target to evolve resistance. As a result these germs don’t respond to the antibiotics when used as medications in people. When the treatments fail to work, many patients suffer severe illness or death.
The petition is supported by previous research which found that oxytetracycline and streptomycin in pesticides contributes to treatment resistant bacteria in crops, soil and water that cause treatment-resistant infections in people.
“Research is clear that the use of antibiotics and antifungals as pesticides poses a threat to public health because it contributes to the evolution of pathogens that are resistant to medicine,” the petition says.
Full Story: CIDRAP
