On the Generation, Impact and Removal of Antibiotic Resistance in the Water Environment

Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 90033, United States

^* Corresponding author. Email: savannaalwaysyes@gmail.com

Abstract

Emerging pollutants that have the potential to significantly impact the environment include antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance, or microorganisms' ability to withstand medications intended to kill them, can have an impact on a variety of facets of daily life. One of the most vital resources for life, water, contains antibiotic resistance. This review explains where antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes come from, how they contaminate the aquatic environment, and how they get into water bodies. Since wastewater is the most prominent growth environment for the production and amplification of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic-resistant genes (ARGs), this review particularly explains the causes of antibiotics and the production of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and resistance genes in wastewater treatment plants, as well as antibiotic resistance mechanisms and detection techniques. Since detection techniques are necessary to the study of antibiotic resistance, different detection techniques will also be described in this paper. In addition, ARB and their genes are not only present in hospital wastewater, but also persist in surrounding surface water, river sediments, and river wildlife, even after the water has been purified. Therefore, this review will describe a class of widely used biological treatment technologies—anaerobic digestion—to eliminate antibiotics and antibiotic genes. Anaerobic digestion is divided into many classes, the most common of which is the anaerobic membrane bioreactor. Finally, an outlook for future research is presented.