Contribution of microplastic particles to the spread of resistances and pathogenic bacteria in treated wastewaters

Addressing main challenges in the tertiary treatment of urban wastewater: are homogeneous photodriven AOPs the answer?

“…(f) anti-microbial resistance", necessary to ensure sufficient protection of the environment and of human and animal health in wastewater reuse practices. 11 Ozonation and activated carbon adsorption (AC) are considered among the best available technologies (BATs) to remove CECs from secondary treated urban wastewater and they have been implemented at full scale in different countries, including the USA, 50 Italy, 51 Switzerland and Germany 52 . Unfortunately, ozonation results in the formation of toxic oxidation/disinfection byproducts and AC treatment is not effective in the inactivation of bacteria, therefore alternative options, such as HP-AOPs, have been successfully investigated as tertiary treatment methods for urban wastewater.…”

“…49 Moreover, the European Union recently introduced a risk assessment-based approach to identify additional water quality requirements in wastewater reuse regulation (EU 2020/741), including "(d) pharmaceuticals; (e) other substances of emerging concern; and (f) anti-microbial resistance", which are necessary to ensure the sufficient protection of the environment and of human and animal health in wastewater reuse practices. 11 Ozonation and activated carbon adsorption (AC) are considered among the best available technologies (BATs) to remove CECs from secondary-treated urban wastewater, and they have been implemented at full scale in different countries, including the USA, 50 Italy, 51 Switzerland, and Germany. 52 Unfortunately, ozonation results in the formation of toxic oxidation/disinfection byproducts, and AC treatment is not effective in the inactivation of bacteria.…”

Microbiotic particles in water and soil, water-soil microbiota coalescences, and antimicrobial resistance

“…Many microbial organisms adhere to microplastics, forming biofilms (the microbial plastisphere) (Reisser et al, 2014;Galafassi et al, 2021). In Chinese river water, bacteria such as Flavobacterium, Pseudomonas (γ-Proteobacteria), Rhodoferax (β-Proteobacteria) Janthinobacterium (β-Proteobacteria) are enriched on microplastics when compared with water and sediment (Hu et al, 2021).…”

“…Microbiotic particles based on microplastics contribute to the emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance (Wang et al, 2020;Hu et al, 2021). However, the relative importance of microplastic biotic particles is dependent on the inoculation environment and the weight of such contribution can differ by location (Galafassi et al, 2021).…”

Visualization and assessment of the microbial colonization process of disposable surgical masks in a typical natural aquatic environment

“…30 Microplastic biofilms are potential "hot spots" for horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance genes, and act as a unique interface for the spreading of antibiotic resistance in the environment. [31][32][33] However, to date, there have been little quantitative research on the behaviors and potential risks of biofilm-colonized DSMs in the environment. Numerous studies have focused on the characteristics of microplastic surfaces colonized by microbes in the marine environment, 16,20,25,30,34 and few studies have attempted to quantify the cell abundance and viability of the biofilms colonizing DSMs in the natural water environment.…”