E-Mail
The increased global use of antiviral and antiretroviral medication could have a detrimental impact on crops and potentially heighten resistance to their effects, new research has suggested.
Scientists from the UK and Kenya found that lettuce plants exposed to a higher concentration of four commonly-used drugs could be more than a third smaller in biomass than those grown in a drug-free environment.
They also examined how the chemicals transferred throughout the crop and found that, in some cases, concentrations were as strong in the leaves as they were in the roots.
The study - published in
Science of the Total Environment - was conducted by environmental chemists from the University of Plymouth (UK), Kisii University (Kenya) and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (Kenya).