Better screen for low-dose drug pollution

Abstract

Researchers are increasingly concerned about the impact on microorganisms and wildlife from the long-term exposure to low-dose mixtures of antibiotics, lipid regulators, psychiatric drugs, and other medicines that end up in aquatic environments. A new study suggests that existing approaches to studying these environmental risks—which typically measure the risk of individual chemicals separately and then add them together—may not provide a realistic assessment of the harm being done, particularly for low-dose mixtures containing antibiotics. Seeking a better alternative, a team led by Francisca Fernández-Piñas of the Autonomous University of Madrid, Rafael Muñoz-Carpena of the University of Florida, and their collaborators has developed a combined computational and experimental high-throughput screening method that involves studying the effects of chemical mixtures on cyanobacteria, a group of microorganisms found abundantly in water systems (Sci. Adv. 2016, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1601272). The team created 180 mixtures of 16 pharmaceutical and personal care product chemicals at nanogram to