For more than 15 years, Surfrider Foundation Europe has been raising public awareness on water quality in nautical activity zones. Year-round independent water quality monitoring and analysis provides concrete data for the association to use when influencing actions at the European level. Concerned that the monitoring performed by public officals is insufficent, Surfrider is diving deeper into a major health issue: antibiotic resistance.
What is antibiotic resistance?
The World Health Organization (WHO) first sounded the alarm on antibiotic resistance almost 10 years ago. The term antibiotic resistance means that a bacterium becomes insensitive to the action of antibiotics. Typically discussed within the parameters of humans and mammals on land, Surfrider Foundation is raising the question of antibiotic resistance risks in the marine environment. To address this concern, Surfrider plans to develop analysis to quantify the amount of resistant bacteria present in sea water and conclude if exposure to these organisms could cause an increase in antibitoic resistance among water sports practitioners.
How does a bacterium become resistant ?
Resistance occurs when bacteria change in response to the use of antibiotic medicines. Through the process of natural selection, only the most resistant bacteria develop adaptability against the effect of antibiotics, and therefore survive and proliferate. In case of stress (changes in the environment), bacteria have a great capacity to exchange their genetic material, thus facilitating the sharing of resistant genes.
Resistant bacteria and natural environment
The excessive and sometimes abusive use of antibiotics in the medical and agricultural industries is at the root of the problem. Resistant bacteria thrive in these over-prescribed environments and are released by organisms through wastewater, which is then processed in treatment plants. Bacteria then travel to natural environment via rivers or directly dumped into the sea. Today, very few water treatment plants are equipped to treat drug rejection, meaning that coastal waters contain resistant bacteria and antibiotic residues that will continue to interact with and infect healthy, naturally-occuring bacteria.
Health risks
Antibiotic resistance is a major global health issue responsible for an estimated 50,000 deaths in Europe and 700,000 deaths worldwide in a study from 2014. Organizations, like WHO, are finding that even the strongest lines of antibiotics are becoming increasingly ineffective against these resistant bacterias, making diseases such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, blood poisoning, gonorrhoea, and foodborne diseases much harder, and sometimes impossible, to treat. The need for more sophisticated medicines are making health care more expensive. Complex surgeries are becoming more dangerous without effective antibiotics to prevent and treat infection. The Institute of Health Surveillance (‘Institut de veille sanitaire’) estimates that in France less than 1% of bacteria are currently resistant to the strongest lines of antibiotics, compared to 62% in Greece and 32% in Italy. Despite the urgency of the situation, few organizations are addressing the issue in order to carry out preventive actions and information to the public.
In order to raise awareness and inform the general public Surfrider Foundation Europe, in collaboration with Modis and the Laboratory of the Pyrenees and Landes, is participating in a project to study antibiotic resistance in coastal areas. After preliminary testing, Surfrider’s objective will be to extend its areas of monitoring to create a broader vision of the issue at hand.
