Public Health Groups File Petition to Remove Antibiotics and Antifungals from Pesticides

A new petition filed by a coalition of public health, conservation, and farmworker advocacy groups urges the EPA to “ban use of pesticides that can promote resistance to medically important antibiotics and antifungals.” CIDRAP has the news.

The petition specifically calls for banning pesticides containing oxytetracycline and streptomycin, which are the two most commonly used antibiotics in pesticides. Both of them are used to “treat a variety of human and animal infections and are considered important for human health by the World Health Organization.” The petition states that “the use of antibiotics and antifungals as pesticides poses a threat to public health because it contributes to the evolution of pathogens that are resistant to medicine.” It can also hurt “water quality, soil health, and wildlife.”

The EPA approved “emergency use of oxytetracycline on citrus trees in Florida in 2016 to combat citrus greening disease, which…has devastated millions of acres of citrus crops.” Use was then expanded in 2018, and streptomycin was authorized for spraying that same year. The U.S. Geological Survey “estimates that more than 125,000 pounds of the two antibiotics were sprayed on crops in 2018.”

The concern is that “spraying sub-therapeutic levels of these antibiotics as pesticides across tens of thousands of acres could spur the development of resistant bacteria on crops and in the soil that could ultimately find their way into people and cause drug-resistant infections.” Past research suggests the use of the two antibiotics “has the potential to select for antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the environment.”