Genesis of Antibiotic Resistance (AR) XLVIII: Inadequate Inactivation of Antibiotic Resistance Gene(s) (ARG) in Bio‐Sludge escalate Antibiotic Resistance Pandemic (ARP)
Authors: Pope Madison , Chavez Norma , Bucio Nadia , Reyes Juan , Sanchez Ricardo , Kannan Subburaj 
Published: June 2021

Inadequately and/or untreated sewage, activated sewage from the waste water treatment plants are main anthropogenic sources of Antibiotic Resistance Bacteria (ARB) encompassing ARG. Concomitant residual (sub‐therapeutic dose) of antibiotics and/or its metabolic intermediates impart a selection pressure on the ARB amending the ARGs with which modified ARB promulgate indeterminately. Implementation of following preventive measure would diminish the potential of bio sludge induced ARP: i. determine and advocate the cost effective and environmentally friendly site/location specific bioremediation method in a global context, while sustaining the processed water/clean water with 0.3 NTU/ FNU, ii. “the sludge from these hotspots should be incinerated instead of being disposal in the regular landfill”, iii. complete review of Clean Water Act, addressing the ARB with ARGs in the environment and amendment of EPA's NPDES, iv. Mandatory testing of the pre‐sewage, treated water/clean water, bio‐sludge/ bio‐solids for the levels of Lactam, sulfonamide, and tetracycline antibiotics, biocides, ARB (CFU's) and corresponding ARGs that are most frequently detected in the wastewater, v. longer hydraulic residence times in the sewage treatment process, vi. intensive research and development effort to determinant the role of bio sludge acts as metal chelate (chelater) in combination with or without fertilizer to reduce the metal toxicity to the plant, vii. determination of chlorine (gas) resistant mutant ARB across the globe in all of the sewage treatment plant & clean water, obtain the ARGs profile data and make it available online for access by academia, viii. annual report on the detection of antibiotics in the influents and effluents from WWTPs; ix. determination antibiotics, its metabolic intermediates concentration in the activated sludge and implementation of relevant antibiotic removable pathways (adsorption, biodegradation, disinfection, membrane separation, hydrolysis, photolysis and volatilization), x. determination of OTU (operational taxonomic unit) of major ARGs, sub types, in the activated sludge, comparative analysis of bacterial count at every stage of the WWTP, xi. identification of “Hot Spots”, xii. universal ban on biological waste water treatment for pharmaceutical waste water, universal adaptation of the membrane ultrafiltration technology as a pretreatment method, xiii. universal practice of incinerating the activated sludge from the “Hot Spots”, xiv. routine update of the database and annotation pipeline for the efficient analysis of the data sets available across the globe for timely data processing, xv. global report on functional screening based on the phenotype environmental sampling of the activated sludge application site and the waste water system for novel ARG, its host and associated mobile genetic elements, xvi. report on the heavy metal contamination on the activated sludge from the “Hot Spots” (environment impacted by the anthropogenic activities).

Support or Funding Information

Supported by the professional development funds provided by the SWTJC to Subburaj Kannan

This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.