Dissemination prevention of antibiotic resistant and facultative pathogenic bacteria by ultrafiltration and ozone treatment at an urban wastewater treatment plant

Abstract

Conventional wastewater treatment is not sufficient for the removal of hygienically relevant bacteria and achieves only limited reductions. This study focuses on the reduction efficiencies of two semi-industrial ultrafiltration units operating at a large scale municipal wastewater treatment plant. In total, 7 clinically relevant antibiotic resistance genes, together with 3 taxonomic gene markers targeting specific facultative pathogenic bacteria were analysed via qPCR analyses before and after advanced treatment. In parallel with membrane technologies, an ozone treatment (1 g ozone/g DOC) was performed for comparison of the different reduction efficiencies. Both ultrafiltration units showed increased reduction efficiencies for facultative pathogenic bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes of up to 6 log units, resulting mostly in a strong reduction of the bacterial targets. In comparison, the ozone treatment showed some reduction efficiency, but was less effective compared with ultrafiltration due to low ozone dosages frequently used for micro-pollutant removal at municipal wastewater treatment plants. Additionally, metagenome analyses demonstrated the accumulation of facultative pathogenic bacteria, antibiotic resistance genes, virulence factor genes, and metabolic gene targets in the back flush retentate of the membranes, which opens further questions about retentate fluid material handling at urban wastewater treatment plants.

Evaluation of antibiotic resistance dissemination by wastewater treatment plant effluents with different catchment areas in Germany

“…This process is enhanced by high bacteria cell densities in nutrient-rich environments 4 . The activated sludge system of WWTPs is by default the perfect setting for ARG transfer events [5][6][7][8] . Because WWTPs are not designed to eliminate ARGs and ARBs, the finale discharge into the receiving water is a key mechanism by which ARGs and ARB enter the aquatic environment 9 .…”

Removal of antibiotic resistance genes in various water resources recovery facilities

“…Antibiotic resistance genes are also affected by the change in SRT (Xia et al, ). In addition, membrane filtration can only retain molecules larger than the pore size of the membrane and most probably the genes that were not retained by the membrane might possibly still be detected in the effluent Hembach, Alexander, Hiller, Wieland, and Schwartz (). In the current study, ultrafiltration membranes with pore sizes of 0.038 µm were used in both systems.…”

An alternative material for an effective treatment technique proposal in the light of bibliometric profile of global scientific research on antibiotic resistance and Escherichia coli

“…MOFs are emerging crystalline hybrid materials that are formed by organic linker buildings and metal ions through coordination bonds (Furukawa et al 2013). MOFs can be easily tunable and designed to be able to use in a wide range of applications including gas storage and separation (Li et al 2014), energy storage devices (Baumann et al 2019), toxic material adsorption (Barea et al 2014), chemical warfare detoxification (Gil-San-Millan et al 2017), and biomedical applications (McKinlay et al 2010;Shen et al 2020). Moreover, recently, MOFs have been utilized in various antibacterial fields owing to their porosity, tunability, and release capability.…”

“…In addition, these bacteria are able to spread their genes into water-indigenous microbes, which also contain resistance genes (Baquero et al 2008). They are not completely mitigated during treatment processes in sewage treatment plants; therefore, they can be distributed to the aquatic environment (Michael et al 2013;Rizzo et al 2013;Hembach et al 2019;Voigt et al 2020). Given this spread of ARGs in surface water and insufficient degradation in sewage treatment plants, antibiotic resistance poses a great threat to public health and to ecology (Krzeminski et al 2020;Thakali et al 2020;Voigt et al 2020).…”