The Superbug spill: When medicine goes rogue

Published 7 June 2026 · health

Pharmaceuticals have been found in waterways almost everywhere in the world, fueling antibiotic-resistant superbugs that no longer respond to treatment. Is there a way out?

Pharmaceuticals have been found in waterways almost everywhere in the world, fueling antibiotic-resistant superbugs that no longer respond to treatment. Is there a way out? At 25, Vanessa Carter was in a devastating car crash in Johannesburg. It broke every bone on the right side of her face and set her on a years-long journey through multiple reconstructive surgeries. Six years on, Carter received a prosthetic implant to reconstruct her cheekbone. Perhaps the worst of her ordeal was over. But one day, she noticed some pus seeping from her face. It was an infection. And for nearly a year, it wouldn't go away. "I was taking antibiotics, I was seeing my doctors, but nobody could give me answers," she told DW. "And all this time this bacterial infection was basically eating away at the tissue on my face." Many antibiotics don't work on MRSA bacteria anymore — strains have become resistant Image: IMAGE POINT FR/BSIP/picture alliance The culprit, it turns out, was MRSA — methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus — one of a growing number of superbugs against which antibiotics have stopped working. A looming global crisis with 10 million deaths per year Antimicrobial resistance — when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites evolve to defeat the drugs designed to kill them — has been identified as a major global health challenge by the UN. By 2050, drug-resistant superbugs could claim 10 million lives annually. If left unchecked, they could cost $412 billion (€352 billion) annually by 2050 and cut $3.4 trillion dollars from global GDP per year over the next decade. One reason behind their spread is the mis- or overuse of antibiotics in healthcare. Another is antibiotic pollution in the environment. Contaminated water sprayed on a field could spell disaster for our food chain Image: robin utrecht/picture alliance "Perhaps you irrigate a crop with water that contains these bacteria.

And then we consume the crop or perhaps we drink some water that contains these genes," said Alistair Boxall, an environmental science professor at the UK's University of York. "That resistance will be getting back into our bodies." Drugs have been found all over the world Pharmaceuticals have been detected in rivers and soils all over the world. A recent study, in which Boxall was involved, tested river water at more than 1,000 sites in 104 countries. "We searched for 61 different pharmaceuticals and apart from a very small number of sites, we found pharmaceuticals everywhere," he said. The only sites free of drug residues were Iceland and a remote village in the Venezuelan rainforest whose Indigenous residents don't use modern medicines. Only the testing sites in Iceland and a remote village in Venezuela's rainforest were free of drug residue Image: Owen Humphreys/dpa/PA Wire/picture alliance Everywhere else, researchers found high levels of the diabetes medication metformin alongside antibiotics and medicines for depression, epilepsy, pain and allergies. A quarter of the sites showed pharmaceutical levels considered harmful to wildlife. How are drugs ending up in the environment? When we take medication, our bodies only absorb part of it. The rest is excreted and ends up in sewage systems. Antibiotics are also frequently overprescribed and overused. Humans consume more than 30,000 tons of the medicine a year. Around a third of that lands in rivers. Many wastewater treatment plants aren't designed to fully remove these substances, so traces pass through into rivers, lakes and soils. Globally, just over half of all wastewater is treated before release. In many lower-income countries, treatment systems are limited or absent entirely, meaning contamination is often much worse in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. Pharmaceutical manufacturing plants are another source of pollution, as is agriculture.