Move
Could Reduce the Effectiveness of Drugs Used to Combat Human Diseases
By Sarah Okeson
The Trump EPA recently approved spraying orange
groves with an antibiotic used to treat a common
sexually-transmitted disease. The move increases the risk that the
antibiotic, oxytetracycline, might
eventually not work to treat chlamydia and other human diseases.
People have until Feb. 4 to request hearings or raise
objections about residue from this antibiotic on oranges and
other citrus fruits.
“Researchers have been telling us for decades to curb the use of
antibiotics in agriculture or risk losing them forever,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist with
the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Trump administration has
chosen to ignore the science and blindly sprint down a path
that could dead-end at bacterial resistance.”
Oxytetracycline and similar antibiotics work by interfering with
the ability of bacteria to grow and multiply. Florida orange growers have used
the drug and another antibiotic, streptomycin, on
an emergency basis against citrus greening, a disease with no cure
that stunts the growth of oranges.
The group of antibiotics that includes oxytetracycline once worked on a wider range of infections than penicillin, but antibiotic resistance now largely limits them to treat acne and chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease that often has no symptoms and can cause infertility.
The rate of chlamydia increased by 6.9% from 2016 to 2017, the
most recent figures available. The state with the highest rate of chlamydia
is Alaska with almost 800 cases per 100,000
people. The rate in the District of Columbia is even higher,
1,337 cases per 100,000 people. The rate of reported chlamydia cases in women is
about twice as high as the rate in men.
Oxytetracycline was once widely used to treat gonorrhea, another common sexually
transmitted disease that may not have symptoms. The drug no longer works well
because of antibiotic resistance. Gonorrhea cases were up 67% in 2017 compared
to five years ago.
AgroSource Inc., one of the companies
involved in distributing the antibiotic for
use on oranges, lists its addressin Florida
records as a home in an expensive Palm Beach County
neighborhood where Olivia Newton-John once lived. The agent for
AgroSource is Taw Richardson.
The EPA could also approve spraying more than 650,000 pounds of
streptomycin, another antibiotic distributed by AgroSource, on citrus groves in
Florida each year. This would be more than 46 times the amount of similar
antibiotics that Americans take each year to combat diseases. Streptomycin is
commonly used to treat tuberculosis.
At least 2 million people in our
nation fall ill each year from bacteria that are resistant to
antibiotics, and at least 23,000 of those people die.
The European Union and Brazil have banned
using oxytetracycline and streptomycin as pesticides on agricultural fields.
ACTION BOX/What You Can Do About It
Object or request a hearing by Feb. 4 about oxytetracycline residue on oranges. Directions are online.Formal objections or requests for a hearing should be sent to Office of the Hearing Clerk (1900L), Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20460-0001.
Call EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler at 202-564-4700 to tell him your thoughts about using antibiotics on oranges or write him at EPA Headquarters / William Jefferson Clinton Building / 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW / Mail Code:1101A / Washington, D.C. 20460
The Center for Biological Diversity can be reached at 520-623-5252 or center@biologicaldiversity.org.
