Question

1. Antibiotics enter the environment in wastewater from pharmaceutical manufacturing plants, in wastes from farms where they are used in animals, and in sewage from human populations.
(Manyantibiotics are excreted in their active form.) The influx of antibiotics into the environment is a concern because the presence of these compounds in the environment selects for antibiotic
resistance. As pollutants, antibiotics can also have ecological effects. Describe some of the ecological roles of bacteria, and explain why disruption of these roles by antibiotic pollution would have a
negative impact.

Answer 1

Antibiotic resistance has different effects on the environment. They are explained below.

Explanation:

Antibiotics are defined as those compounds which are able to either kill or restrict the reproduction hence development of prokaryotic organisms for example bacteria. This antibiotics are consumed by human as well as  made to consume by different animals to protect themselves from the infections of different diseases. These antibiotics are produced in the pharmaceutical laboratories as well as different factories which are often unknowingly disposed off from their drains.

Antibiotics which are consumed by human are often excreted as active metabolite in their excretory products like urine. These compounds when get into wastewaters often kill huge amount of bacterias residing there. This disrupts the ecological balance hence deteriorating the decomposition of various organic compounds. Also these antibiotics can be drained into to agricultural fields, ponds, rivers lakes etc which can disrupt the whole ecological balance. Antibiotics when get into bacteria either kill them or this bacteria may undergo different mutations to save themselves from this antibiotics. This makes tjsm antibiotic resistant.