Almost two hundred years ago, Dr John Snow identified the faecal contaminated water as a source of bacterial infections during a severe cholera outbreak. Several years later, we have developed many weapons on our arsenal to reduce the bacterial infections, from simple ones such as public hygiene measures (e.g. frequent showers & hand washing, clean water), to specialised ones such as the use of antibiotics. The antibiotics inhibit the bacterial growth, thus their use has effectively helped to treat many bacterial infections, revolutionizing medicine. Successful recovery from surgical operations would be seldom and would last exponentially without their use. Yet, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has increased globally threatening to render antibiotics useless.
However, the “golden era” of novel antibiotics development, when many novel antibiotics were discovered in a few years, belongs to the past. The bacteria developed resistance mechanisms to every single one of the antibiotics and rendered them useless. This could be reflected to an increase in the death rates, but more importantly to the increased health-care costs, which might compromise the treatment for other diseases. The Covid-19 pandemic provided such a clear paradigm on the straining of health care systems during massive parallel hospitalisation of patients. While, the misuse of antibiotics for human and veterinary was the main contributor of the increased AMR levels, other anthropogenic activities greatly contributed to AMR spread as well. Specifically, the wastewater treatment plants are considered as hotspots for AMR and agricultural practices, such as manure amendment, have been show to clearly promote AMR. Thus, the scientific community across clinical settings, environmental and agricultural sectors intensively researches on AMR, in an attempt to fully understand the AMR phenomenon.
Nevertheless, the AMR is not the only problem that currently occurs in our society. The climate change, the urbanisation and the ever increasing human population has caused an increasing freshwater scarcity. The demand for treated wastewater (TWW) irrigation has increased due to this freshwater scarcity, and is expected to increase more. Since the TWW contains a high load of antibiotics, antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), the irrigation with TWW has raised concerns regarding AMR spread in the environment. Many studies have attempted to investigate the impact of TWW on AMR spread in crops and soil; however, the impact on deeper lying environments remains not yet elucidated. This should raise concerns, since groundwater remains the most valuable drinking water source globally. Here in this thesis, I attempted to gain further understanding on whether TWW irrigation promotes the AMR spread in the soil and the so-far neglected deeper-lying subsurface environments. My outmost desire is that the present work will contribute to a framework of minimising the potential risks during TWW irrigation, rendering TWW irrigation as a safe and sustainable alternative for freshwater resources depletion.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:79101 |
| Date | 10 May 2022 |
| Creators | Kampouris, Ioannis |
| Contributors | Berendonk, Thomas U., Topp, Edward, Samaras, Petros, Technische Universität Dresden |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:doctoralThesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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