Widespread Antibiotic, Biocide, and Metal Resistance in Microbial Communities Inhabiting a Municipal Waste Environment and Anthropogenically Impacted River

Abstract

Landfill leachate is a persistent contamination threat for terrestrial waters. Microbial metabolism in landfills transforms contaminants and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. A better understanding of landfill-associated microbial communities will inform bioremediation of solid waste environments and improve pathogen monitoring. We leveraged shotgun metagenomics to investigate the microbial communities of the Riverton City dump and the adjoining Duhaney River near Kingston City, Jamaica. We identified no overlap between the microbial communities inhabiting the Riverton City dump leachate and the Duhaney River. Both communities are predicted to degrade aromatic compounds, which are ubiquitous environmental pollutants. Adversely, microbes in both environments are predicted to withstand widely used antibiotics, antiseptics, and metal contamination. The absence of evidence for microbial transfer from the leachate to the river is encouraging; however, the Duhaney River contained several organisms with predicted pathogenic lifestyles, indicating that the river represents a human health risk regardless of impact from the dump.

Structure of Bacterial Community with Resistance to Antibiotics in Aquatic Environments. A Systematic Review

“…The study carried out by Lambirth et al [ 58 ] reports the existence of genes for resistance to carbapenems and broad-spectrum β-lactamases. In accordance with the data provided around the world, the reports in Latin America, such as those made by Collins-Fairclough et al [ 23 ], Delgado-Gardea et al [ 34 ], Coutinho et al [ 45 ] and Fresia et al [ 56 ], present the same trend in the frequency of ARGs, with a predominance of resistance to β-lactams, aminoglycosides and macrolides.…”

“…Of these, there were 128 duplicates, and 16,013 were excluded on the basis of title and abstract screening. A total of 68 studies [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , ...…”

Potential Environmental and Human Health Risks Caused by Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (ARB), Antibiotic Resistance Genes (ARGs) and Emerging Contaminants (ECs) from Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Landfill

“…Hence, several crucial factors like MGEs, heavy metals, landfill ages, antibiotics, and microbial diversity are important players in the abundance and dissemination of ARGs in landfill leachate associated with agro- and aquaculture [ 52 , 54 , 55 , 56 ]. Enterococcus faecalis isolated from a contaminated dumpsite showed 100% resistance to chloramphenicol, erythromycin, and tetracycline [ 57 ] and showed that the antibiotic and metal resistance genes are frequently carried on the MGEs. A close relationship between metal resistance and AR was found in the landfill of Okhla near New Delhi, where the disposable materials mostly contained pharmaceuticals and industrial wastes [ 58 ].…”

Adaption of microbial communities to the hostile environment in the Doce River after the collapse of two iron ore tailing dams

“…However, three microbiological isolates were tolerant to high iron concentration (1 mM). The study by Collins-Fairclough et al (2018), based on metagenome data, detected bacterial pathogens that had extensive predictive profiles of distinct metal resistance at Jamaica's largest solid waste disposal site and an anthropogenically impacted river. Possibly many other bacterial isolates could have been obtained since our cultures were based on the limitation of few culturing media.…”