WEEDKILLER could be making antibiotic medicines less effective, warns a new study by the University of York.
While herbicides are commonly used on farms to target weeds, scientists say they can cause damage to soil microbes like bacteria and fungi.
Researchers found mutations which improved the ability of bacteria to survive and grow despite herbicides also made them more tolerant to antibiotics.
Bacteria can also pass genes between each other and herbicide exposure led to them passing antibiotic resistance genes more often.
The study, led by researchers at the University of York, examined fields in the UK and 11 Chinese provinces. Researchers fear that farms treated with herbicides could be contributing to worrying levels of antibiotic resistant infections seen in humans.
Dr Ville Friman from the Department of Biology said: "Our results suggest that the use of herbicides could indirectly drive antibiotic resistance evolution in agricultural soil microbiomes, which are repeatedly exposed to herbicides during weed control."
The findings have been published in the journal Molecular Biology & Evolution.
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