ABSTRACT
China is the largest producer and user of antibiotics in the world (Zhu, 2013). Zhang et al. (2015) reported that 162,000 tons of antibiotics were consumed in China in 2013: 84,240 tons of antibiotics were given to animals to prevent disease, and 77,760 tons to people (Zhang 2015, Table 2). This is about nine times more than in the U.S., where 14,600 tons of antibiotics are consumed by animals, and 3,290 tons are consumed by people (Zhang et al., 2015, Table 2). Almost all antibiotics end up in the water bodies after excretion by animals and humans. Radio Free Asia (2015) reported that according to Ying Guang-Guo, a professor in environmental chemistry and ecotoxicology, “the same antibiotics that end up in rivers and fields through wastewater then return to human bodies through aquatic and agricultural products, forming a vicious circle”. According to some estimates, in China there are “one million deaths a year from antibiotic-resistant infections, which occur when the microbes adapt to the antibiotics when there is not enough dosage to kill them” (Radio Free Asia, 2015). Some of the bodies of water with the highest amounts of antibiotics are the Dongting Lake in central China where researchers found 3,440 tons of substances in 2013, and the Yellow, Huaihe, and Yangtze downstream river basins where researchers found 3,000 tons of antibiotics in 2013 (Figure 4.1). Antibiotic emission map of China https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315617879/d9b2471f-ce60-414c-86da-e7c54d234b37/content/fig4_1_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Zhang et al., 2015
