Is antibiotic residue in food making me sick?

December 5, 2007 12:04 PM

Is it possible that sulfa residue in food is causing my daily asthma/allergy symptoms? In a nutshell: extremely allergic to sulfa antibiotics, moved to US about 11 years ago after being raised eating mainly food grown nearby or by neighbors, began having asthma/chronic cough issues shortly thereafter. Batteries of allergy tests have never been able to ID the trigger. Recently realized that sulfa is one of antibiotics that farmers here feed livestock as if it were some kind of candy.

First of all, for the purpose of disambiguation, sulfa antibiotics ≠ sulfur. Also, I know you are not a doctor and that even if you are, you are not giving me medical advice, I have lots of my own doctors that I see all the time, and I am undergoing standard treatment protocols (Singulair, Advair) and am under the care of a pulmonary specialist.

I found out I was allergic to sulfa antibiotics around the age of 13, when I went into anaphylactic shock after taking a standard dosage; since then, I have been avoiding them, which I imagined was an easy thing to do. Turns out that might not be so easy to do in the US. Shortly after moving here at the age of 18, I began having trouble with chronic, year-around asthma and allergies, primarily in the form of cough-variant asthma.

Outside of my sulfa allergy, I have not encountered many allergy problems. Pollen, dander, and the other usual suspects make me sneezy and watery-eyed, but they don't cause asthma attacks. I've had allergy skin tests and never reacted to anything besides the control test. I'm not one of your "I'm allergic to EVERYTHING" people, I guess I'm trying to say.

My diet includes meat and dairy; when I cook at home, I use organics, hormone- and antibiotic-free foods. Unfortunately, I eat out a lot, so most of the food I consume has potentially more dubious origins. Beef is something I rarely cook at home, but which I do eat a couple times a week in the form of hamburgers at local hotspots. The milk and dairy products I consume at home are never a problem, but those same things eaten in restaurants sometimes do cause reactions.

Due to some writing I have been doing about the beef industry, I found out that the feedlot for the beef I most frequently consume has had a run-in with the FDA over unacceptable levels of Albon® S.R. (sulfadimethoxine) in their beef. Cue freak out! This was the first time it occurred to me that I might in fact be getting pretty regular, low doses of sulfa.

I've never tied my asthma attacks to anything specific, beyond the fact that sometimes dairy makes me cough, and over the past few years my internal explanatory narrative has more and more resembled this. It has been pretty rough, I must say, with effects including two hernias from the horrible coughing.

To wrap this up, I had a burger with a friend last night, and wham, huge asthma attack a few hours later. I'm not trying to do the whole after-and-therefore-caused-by argument, but it seems at least possible that there is a connection.

Tangentially relevant articles I have found online include this alert regarding dangerous levels of sulfa in a Canadian honey a while back, this article on antibiotic levels in milk, and these lecture notes, which claim that there have been no cases of reactions to sulfonomide residue in food. The latter articles seem to challenge the idea that harmful levels of sulfa may actually be in our food.

So, my questions for the hive mind:

1. Has anyone else tied consumption of sulfa residue to allergic problems, especially asthma? If so, what has helped? How about any of the other antibiotics that the FDA is ok with allowing in our food and to which many people are allergic: i.e., penicillin, tetracycline, etc. (Anecdotal and researched findings are equally welcome.)

2. Are there foods beyond meat (including poultry), eggs, and dairy products that might contain traces of sulfa residue? I'm going to try to eliminate the foods I mentioned from my diet for a while and see if that helps the asthma.

Thanks for any suggestions.

posted by bloggerwench to Health & Fitness (20 answers total)

I work with soil scientists and worryingly enough, in laboratory experiments, some plants do take up sulfa antibiotics.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2007/2007-07-12-01.asp

There are some controversy with that particular study implying that it was a problem particular to organics (conventional cropping uses manure + other stuff, while organics typically use just manure, but they aren't allowed to use the raw manure used in this study). But it does drive home the fact that organic farms would be better off if they used manure from organic animals.

Your problem is interesting and there are probably other with the same problem who don't even know it. Antibiotics in the food system are huge problem. I had antibiotic resistant salmonella and it tore my stomach apart before they caught it. These things are hard to trace...hard to lay specific blame on, especially since plants are now being contaminated along with the usual suspects like ground meat and raw eggs.

I'd try to either eat organics low on the food chain or start buying local from producers you know. I emphasize really knowing those producers, because not all local small producers are dedicated to antibiotic-free agriculture.
posted by melissam at 12:22 PM on December 5, 2007

I also would emphasize that levels are most likely to be dangerous high on the food chain. So even if plants are absorbing this stuff, the meat is going to have the most.
posted by melissam at 12:26 PM on December 5, 2007

This is completely anecdotal and based on speculation of the parties involved so take it with a huge grain of salt.

What you're talking about is something I've heard before from someone who has an allergy to penicillin. Their only known allergy is to penicillin and penicillin like drugs. They recently had an allergic reaction to turkey. Turkeys in the US are treated with penicillin. They speculate that their allergic reaction was not to the turkey but to the drugs within the turkey. This is all speculation.
posted by 517 at 1:00 PM on December 5, 2007

So even if plants are absorbing this stuff, the meat is going to have the most.

Not necessarily. Animals have livers, which break down sulfa drugs, and they're very good at it. For instance, sulfamethoxazole has a half-life of 10 hours in humans. It's almost certainly comparable in swine (who are omnivorous), and probably about the same in cattle. A week is 17 half-lives, which means that a week after the last dose of the stuff, the blood level would be down to 1/(2^17) of the original blood level, i.e. 1/128,000. Which is to say it would be negligible. No allergy is that sensitive.

So the only real concern would be whether animals were dosed just prior to being slaughtered, and I seriously doubt that they are -- simply because by that point there's no reason to do so.

Plants don't have any equivalent to the liver, and probably are not as good at breaking down foreign organics, especially ones not found in nature. If it is true that plants can absorb it from manure fertilizer, it's not at all farfetched that the drug could persist until the plant was harvested.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 1:02 PM on December 5, 2007 [1 favorite]

There is a possible link between onion allergies and sulfa allergies. Onion (or garlic) is a very likely ingredient in the preparation of a hamburger. I myself get sick from both sulfa drugs and the onions/garlic family. There is a yahoo group called onionfree which has discussed the possible connection and its technicalities. I would suggest that you start checking your reaction after ingesting onions, raw or otherwise.
posted by molasses at 1:14 PM on December 5, 2007 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I'll check onions and garlic; however, I have been eating both since I was a kidlet, and the problems with asthma only started after I moved to the US as an adult.
posted by bloggerwench at 1:18 PM on December 5, 2007

You're kinda on the right track but looking for the wrong culprit. Hightly processed food is often a major trigger for wheezing (e.g. the scent added to fast food, the increased amounts of fat and preservatives.) It's not necessarily the antibiotics, but considering milk in particular makes such enormous use of them it's not a bad idea to cut down anyway. My dad works for Defra here (uk) and has told me that they are only NOW bothering to do studies on whether it's ok to us them in the dairy industry.
posted by gatchaman at 1:23 PM on December 5, 2007

I don't know, but this is really interesting to me, as a fellow sulfa-allergic sufferer of chronic general "allergy" symptoms that have never been diagnosable as anything particular. My sulfa reaction isn't nearly as bad as yours sounds, but I still wonder.

If you come across any good studies, could you come back and post citations here?
posted by Stacey at 1:26 PM on December 5, 2007

Response by poster: Even when I eat out, highly-processed food is anathema to me. Most of the restaurants I frequent would describe themselves as local, sustainable, natural if not organic, etc. Fast food is not my thing. In fact, the beef that I eat most frequently is kinda upscale and expensive, which is why I was upset to hear that they were doing crazy things to the cattle. There is one dairy item I eat pretty often that is not subject to the rigorous standards I normally have for groceries I buy, and that's cream cheese. Even when the bagel is billed as local, organic, whatever, they still give you some Philadelphia cream cheese.
posted by bloggerwench at 1:31 PM on December 5, 2007

Anecdotal, but from a source I trust. My microbiology professor in pharmacy school had a reaction to tetracycline in fast-food fried chicken. So, yeah, I think this is possible.
posted by selfmedicating at 1:35 PM on December 5, 2007

bloggerwench, I only started with onion problems in my early twenties (and the sulfa drug problem was discovered in my mid twenties). At first I could avoid problems if the onions were well-cooked or powdered, and garlic was OK to eat. As the years progressed, even well cooked onions made me sick. Now, twentyish years later, even powdered onions and powdered garlic cause problems. I guess what I am trying to say is, allergy problems can appear out of nowhere OR progress from a small problem to a large one. At least in my observation. I didn't even link the sulfa and the onion thing until hearing from quite a few people with the same combination of allergies. Good luck tracking your problem down!
posted by molasses at 1:40 PM on December 5, 2007

Response by poster: Hi molasses, can you provide a bit more details on the symptoms you experience after eating onions? Are they gastrointestinal, respiratory, or some other such thing? Thank you for sharing about this.
posted by bloggerwench at 1:46 PM on December 5, 2007

My symptoms include a killer headache that usually lasts into the next day (maybe a migraine?); gastro-intestinal misery involving the whole digestive tract from top to bottom; and what I call "onion breath" - can TASTE firey hot onions for about 24 hours in my breath, even though my husband can't smell a thing. It feels like waves of onion gas rising up from my percolating stomach through my esophagus. Sorry to be so descriptive. So, my reaction is not life-threatening, like asthma, but it definitely interrupts my life! And, of course, to top it off, I love the taste of onions.
posted by molasses at 2:03 PM on December 5, 2007

Another anecdote: My sister is also highly allergic to sulfa antibiotics and has never had a reaction to eating anything. Except seafood, of course, but since she's also allergic to seafood that's another kettle of worms.
posted by Justinian at 2:12 PM on December 5, 2007

Response by poster: The onion-garlic sulfa threads rely on a false correlation of sulfa antibiotics with sulfur, sulfites, and sulfates, when they are in fact unrelated. It could simply be coincidental that some people with onion allergies also have sulfa allergies; 3% of the population are allergic to sulfa, so there's bound to be some overlap.
posted by bloggerwench at 2:33 PM on December 5, 2007

Well that is interesting. Since I already know what my problem is I don't really care if there is a scientific link or not between onion allergies and sulfa allergies; I am sorry if I've perpetuated incorrect info. I hope you can conclusively find what you are allergic to.
posted by molasses at 5:17 PM on December 5, 2007

Sulfonamides are both pesticides and herbicides, so you should wash fruit/vegetables. You should do that anyway, of course. Try eating veggie/vegan when you're out. It's not that bad.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 5:46 PM on December 5, 2007

Have you tried an allergy blood test? I've found that they're much more accurate than the skin test. That may not actually help you in terms of what you're going through now but may in the long run be very beneficial. I'm allergic to sulfa antibiotics and have severe asthma but I've never had an asthma attack related to food consumption. Have you ruled out a food allergy?
posted by cooker girl at 6:12 PM on December 5, 2007

I know two people with sulfa allergies that cannot eat poultry due to the levels of anitbiotics in the meat so Id' say it's certainly possible.

My sister is also highly allergic to sulfa antibiotics and has never had a reaction to eating anything. Except seafood, of course
Imported farm raised seafood (such as shrimp) is usually stuffed to the gills with antibiotics. Especially bad if it's from a place with lax laws about that kind of thing.
posted by fshgrl at 9:39 PM on December 5, 2007

whoahhhh no answers for you but this is really interesting to me as I am allergic to sulfa also, tho no "direct" exposure to sulfa drugs in over 10 yrs, last year i had a serious allergic reaction that was never really ascribed to anything. they ended up saying I was allergic to NSAIDS because it was the only thing they couldnt' test for that I'd consumed within a few hours...but they already knew I was allergic to sulfa drugs and I don't think we ever considered that maybe I'd consumed some food that had this...but I haven't had another one since and haven't changed my eating style at all....interesting....probably the world will never know but definitely food for thought really bad pun intended.
posted by Soulbee at 8:15 AM on December 6, 2007