The Epoch Times By Ellen Wan
Chinese manufacturers produce over 200,000 tons of antibiotics each year for use by the pharmaceutical, healthcare, agriculture, and aquaculture industries. While antibiotics are essential, effluent from the manufacturing factories and overuse in China are polluting the environment, causing antibiotic resistance, and endangering people’s lives.
One of the more serious outcomes of China’s massive use of antibiotics is water pollution.
China’s largest and most severely polluted river is the Yangtze. A 2020 study by Hehai University’s Yangtze River Protection and Green Development Institute found the average concentration of antibiotics in the river had reached 156 nanograms per liter (ng/L). This is much higher than concentrations in the United States and countries in Europe. It also found that antibiotic manufacturing waste in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River were among the highest in China, with an annual emission intensity of about 60 kilograms per square kilometer (kg/square km).
