1 - Tertiary treatment technologies for removal of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes from wastewater

Abstract

Indiscriminate use of antibiotics in humans and animals and release of inadequately treated hospital, animal farming, and aquaculture wastewater into the domestic sewage have led to an increased concentration of antibiotics in the wastewater. In the presence of positive selection pressure due to subinhibitory concentration favoring antibiotic-resistant strains, wastewater treatment plants serve as a hotspot for rapid dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes in susceptible strains. The technologies used water treatment plants, especially the tertiary treatment, which may play a pivotal role in checking the release of antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant genes into the environment. Conventional treatments involving chlorination as well as advanced oxidation processes like ozonation, Fenton process, photo-Fenton process, and their combination with UV/H2O2 are being studied for degradation of various antibiotics during water treatment. Similarly, a large number of culture-based and metagenomics analyses have been carried out on the removal of antibiotic resistance genes in various pilot scale and field scale wastewater treatment systems. This chapter discusses the role of different tertiary treatments in handling antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes in wastewater. The different types of tertiary treatment technologies are compared in terms of their efficiencies in dealing with these emerging pollutants so as to devise a treatment strategy that poses minimum threat to the ecosystem.