Nebraska environmental engineers targeting antimicrobial resistance in environment

Aided by a $2.4 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, a team of University of Nebraska–Lincoln environmental engineers and scientists is leading a multi-state effort to assess the potential threat to human health from antimicrobial-resistant pathogens spread via wastewater and agricultural runoff. 

“Traditionally and for good reason, public health experts have focused on clinical settings like hospitals and nursing homes, because that is where patients acquire resistant bacteria,” said Xu Li, the study’s principal investigator. “Now we are seeing that the environment could also be a pathway where people acquire those resistant pathogens — and that is why the EPA is stepping in to look at that.”   

Wastewater treatment plants are efficient in removing pollutants in domestic wastewater; however, they are also suspected to be a focal point for introducing antimicrobial-resistant bacteria and antimicrobial resistance genes into the environment via rivers and streams, said Li, who is the Dale Jacobson and Debra Leigh Professor of Environmental Engineering at Nebraska. 

Other Husker researchers involved in the EPA project are Yusong Li, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Shannon Bartelt-Hunt, department chair of civil and environmental engineering and Donald R. Voelte Jr. and Nancy A. Keegan Chair of Engineering, and Bing Wang, a veterinary microbiologist and food safety expert. 

Resistant bacteria find their way into wastewater treatment plants, and in turn into rivers and streams, via household use of medications and cleaning products, as well as by discharge from hospitals and antimicrobial manufacturing plants. Antimicrobial bacteria and genes also could be carried into river water through runoff from cropland fertilized with livestock manure or biosolids from wastewater treatment plants.  

In addition, antimicrobial resistant bacteria and resistance genes naturally occur in the environment. The EPA is interested in quantifying the antimicrobial resistant bacteria and resistance genes in surface water that are attributable to wastewater treatment plant effluent and biosolids.

Nebraska was one of four institutions awarded a total of $9 million by the EPA for research to address knowledge gaps and better identify and manage antimicrobial resistance risk.