Would the environment be sick because of our medicines? Hugo Clément asks the question in Drugs: the ticking time bombbroadcast on Monday, November 14 at 9 p.m., on France 5. From wastewater treatment plants unable to eliminate the residues of our pills from wastewater to antibiotic resistance, the journalist returns to this documentary which has “much marked”.
Franceinfo: Was it complicated to investigate this subject?
Hugo Clement: Yes, because it is a sensitive subject. The pharmaceutical industry is very opaque, so it was difficult to find the testimonials, to have access to certain places. Showing the contamination of the environment was not easy, it required weeks of investigation, months of filming. In total, it took almost a year to make the documentary. The part in India was really difficult, because there was a lot of police pressure.
What shocked you the most?
The sequence at the rabbit breeder. I find it amazing that a breeder explains that he does not eat the rabbits he produces. It means there is a problem. These rabbits, selected to grow quickly and live in close proximity, have a very fragile immune system. The slightest disease can decimate a farm, so to avoid this risk which would lead to significant economic losses, a large number of breeders treat them preventively with antibiotics. This is a leap forward, because the more we use, the more the bacteria learn to resist these drugs and the more we will have to use.
The sequence on antibiotic resistance also made a big impression on me. I was not at all aware of the seriousness of the situation, and I had no idea how much it could become a real public health problem, and ultimately cause more deaths than cancer. I didn’t know that there were already people hospitalized in France, in a form of therapeutic impasse, with seemingly fairly trivial infections which, in the end, cannot be treated.
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All antibiotics tend to become ineffective. I was also unaware that we had resistant bacteria in our environment in France.
Another subject of your documentary concerns wastewater treatment plants that do not filter drug residues. Why are the authorities not taking up the problem?
Because it’s a question of cost. Giving treatment plants with equipment that allows them to get rid of drug residues would slightly increase the water bill. But in fact it’s not that expensive, it was about a euro more in the town where we went. It’s not much, but it’s a powerful enough brake that most treatment plants are not equipped. There are only four in France which are equipped with powerful filters.
“It’s also a political choice to know what we want and what is the priority. This problem is totally underestimated and the scientists we met are very worried.”
Hugo Clement, journalistat franceinfo
Researchers are very concerned about the amplification of the phenomenon of water contamination which renders antibiotics ineffective, and about the consequences that will occur in the coming years.