Superbugs take flight from cattle farms
Windy weather can carry antibiotics and drug-resistant bacteria to nearby communities
By Beth Mole
Being downwind of 50,000 cows is not only bad for your nose; it could also be bad for your health.
Gusts of wind blowing through high-density cattle facilities send veterinary antibiotics and drug-resistant bacteria flying, which could spur difficult-to-treat infections in nearby communities. The finding appears online January 22 in Environmental Health Perspectives.
The study raises more concerns about the overuse of agricultural antibiotics, which account for about 80 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States (SN: 3/8/14, p.5). Such use is known to create drug-resistant bacteria, but little data exist on how these farm-raised superbugs travel and how dangerous they are to humans.