Alternative, environmentally conscious approaches for removing antibiotics from wastewater treatment systems

Prevalence of antibiotic resistance in the environment is of critical concern from a public health perspective, with many human impacted environments showing increased incidence of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Wastewater treatment environments are of particular interest due to their high levels of antibiotic residuals, which can select for antibiotic resistance genes in bacteria. However, wastewater treatment plants are generally not designed to remove antibiotics from collected waste, and many of the currently proposed methods are unsafe for environmental use. This has prompted researchers to identify alternative environmentally safe methods for removing antibiotics from wastewater to be used in parallel with conventional wastewater treatment, as it is a potential strategy towards the mitigation of environmental antibiotic resistance selection. This paper reviews several methods developed to absorb and/ or degrade antibiotics from aqueous solutions and wastewater biosolids, which includes ligninolytic fungi and ligninolytic enzymes, algae-driven photobioreactors and algae-activated sludge, and organically-sourced biochars. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The prevalence of antibiotic resistance in the environment is a critical public health concern, particularly in wastewater treatment environments. Many currently proposed methods for removing antibiotics from wastewater are unsafe for environmental use, leading researchers to seek alternative environmentally safe methods to mitigate environmental antibiotic resistance selection.