Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) represents a major global health threat, as well as a major hazard to sustainable economic development and national security. It remains, therefore, vital that current research aligns to policy development and implementation to alleviate a potential crisis. One must consider, for example, whether drivers of antibiotic resistance can be controlled in the future, or have they already accumulated in the past, whether from antibiotics and/or other pollutants? Unfortunately, industrial heritage and its pollution impact on the prevalence of environmental AMR have largely been ignored. Focussing on industrialised estuaries, we demonstrate that anthropogenic pollution inputs in addition to the natural diurnal environmental conditions can sufficiently create stressful conditions to the microbiome and thus promote selective pressures to shift the resistome (i.e., collection of resistance traits in the microbiological community). Unfortunately, the bacteria's survival mechanisms, via co-selective pressures, can affect their susceptibility to antibiotics. This review highlights the complexity of estuarine environments, using two key contaminant groups (metals/toxic elements and polyaromatic hydrocarbons), through which a variety of possible chemical and biological pollutant stressors can promote the emergence and dissemination of antimicrobial resistance. We find compelling divers to call on more focused research on historically disrupted ecosystems, in propagating AMR in the real world.

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Pentachlorophenol is globally dispersed and contamination of soil with this biocide adversely affects its functional biodiversity, particularly of fungi -key colonisers. Their functional role as a community is poorly understood, although a few pathways have been already elucidated in pure cultures. This constitutes here our main challenge -elucidate how fungi influence the pollutant mitigation processes in forest soils.Circumstantial evidence exists that cork oak forests in N.W. Tunisia -economically critical managed forests, are likely to be contaminated with pentachlorophenol but the scientific evidence has previously been lacking. Our data illustrate significant forest contamination through the detection of undefined active sources of pentachlorophenol. By solving the taxonomic diversity and the pentachlorophenol-derived metabolomes of both the cultivable fungi and the fungal community we demonstrate here that most strains (predominantly penicillia) participate in the pollutant biotic degradation. They form a array of degradation intermediates and by-products, including several hydroquinone, resorcinol and catechol derivatives, either chlorinated or not.The degradation pathway of the fungal community includes uncharacterised derivatives, e.g. tetrachloroguaiacol isomers. Our study highlights fungi key role in the mineralisation and short lifetime of pentachlorophenol in forest soils and provide novel tools to monitor its degradation in other fungi dominated food-webs.

Pentachlorophenol (PCP) bioremediation by the fungal strains amongst the cork-colonising community has not yet been analysed. In this paper, the co-and direct metabolism of PCP by each of the 17 fungal species selected from this community were studied. Using hierarchical data analysis, the isolates were ranked by their PCP bioremediation potential. Fifteen isolates were able to degrade PCP under co-metabolic conditions, and surprisingly Chrysonilia sitophila, Trichoderma longibrachiatum, Mucor plumbeus, Penicillium janczewskii and P. glandicola were able to directly metabolise PCP, leading to its complete depletion from media. PCP degradation intermediates are preliminarily discussed. Data emphasise the signiWcance of these fungi to have an interesting potential to be used in PCP bioremediation processes.

Pentachlorophenol (PCP) has been used as a herbicide, biocide and preservative worldwide since the 1930s and as a result, extensive and prolonged contamination exists. The environmental impact increases when its many degradation products are taken into consideration. A number of chloroanisols and their related chlorophenols have been found in cork slabs collected from Portuguese oak tree forests before stopper manufacturing, and contamination by PCP and polychlorinated anisole (PCA) has been detected in Canadian forests. It is suggested that the use of polychlorinated phenols, in particular PCP, is thought to be a cause of the cork taint problem in wine, a major socio-economic impact not only for industry but on sensitive and highly biodiverse ecosystems. It also highlights particular issues relating to the regional regulation of potentially toxic chemicals and global economics world wide. To fully understand the impact of contamination sources, the mechanisms responsible for the fate and transport of PCP and its degradation products and assessment of their environmental behaviour is required. This review looks at the current state of knowledge of soil sorption, fate and bioavailability and identifies the challenges of degradation product identification and the contradictory evidence from field and laboratory observations. The need for a systematic evaluation of PCP contamination in relation to cork forest ecosystems and transfer of PCP between trophic levels is emphasised by discrepancies in bioaccumulation and toxicity. This is essential to enable long term management of not only transboundary contaminants, but also the sustainable management of socially and economically important forest ecosystems.