Are we making our life endangered by drinking water?

Figure: Drinking water system (Su, H.-C et al. 2018)

Antibiotics not only play as a therapeutic drug for human beings but also for aquaculture, livestock and farming. With the excessive use of antibiotics, it has made the environment contaminated by antibiotic resistant bacteria, antibiotic residues, antibiotic resistance genes (ARG). Since the rise of environmental contaminants, the antibiotic resistance genes (ARG) were detected in various places in our environment such as hospital wastewater, wastewater treatment plants, chicken, beef, pork, dairy. These ARGs can transfer to humans by drinking water sources and endangering human life. Su, H.-C and his colleagues conducted a research to investigate and occurrence and diversity of ARGs in source water, water treatment plants and tap water. Their research showed that 27 different ARGs were present in those water sources. The total abundance of the detected ARGs in tap water was much lower than that in source water. Sand filtration and sedimentation in drinking water treatment plants could effectively remove ARGs. It was found that Pseudomonas may be involved in the proliferation and dissemination of ARGs in the studied drinking water treatment system. It could be noted that sedimentation and sand filtration could be effective methods for removing ARGs in aquatic systems.



Original article:
Su, H.-C., Liu, Y.-S., Pan, C.-G., Chen, J., He, L.-Y., & Ying, G.-G. (2018). Persistence of antibiotic resistance genes and bacterial community changes in drinking water treatment system: From drinking water source to tap water. Science of The Total Environment, 616-617, 453–461. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.10.318