Send message to Authors

Short abstract:

This paper explores the the mobilization of expert, government, industry, and citizen knowledges in attempts to establish standards for regulating antibiotic pollution in the environment around pharmaceutical manufacturing hubs.

Long abstract:

Residues from industry waste and from human and agricultural overuse have led to antibiotic pollution of local water bodies in the pharmaceutical manufacturing hub of Baddi, raising concerns about increasing Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in human and animal pathogens. This paper explores the mobilization of expert, government, industry, and citizen knowledges in establishing standards for regulating Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) in the environment. In 2020, the Government of India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change published a draft notification that proposed PNEC (Predicted No Effect Concentration) values to limit pharmaceutical industry effluents, as advocated by the AMR Industry Alliance. Following protests from local manufacturers, PNEC limits were not included in the final version of their regulations. Having conducted their own testing at effluent outlet points in Baddi, the Veterans Forum, an NGO, launched an appeal to the National Green Tribunal and submitted a case against the State Pollution Control Board for not taking adequate action to limit APIs. However, the appropriateness of PNEC values, established under laboratory conditions, for determining exposure limits is contested among environmental scientists. Drawing on a project investigating human exposure to pharmaceutical industry waste including ethnography and observation at local manufacturing and waste disposal sites, interviews with pharmaceutical managers, bureaucrats, and community members in Baddi, and national scientific and stakeholder meetings, we explore the troubling of environmental exposure measures in a setting where occupation, living conditions, geographical location and waste disposal practices drive unequal distributions of exposure to antibiotics and AMR.