Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, Columbia University, 500 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA.
Chemosphere. 2010 Feb;78(9):1071-7. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2009.12.068. Epub 2010 Jan 22.
The overall goal of this study was to quantify the propensity of the activated sludge (AS) process at three wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) to amplify or attenuate tetracycline resistant bacteria (TRB) and tetracycline resistance genes (TRG). Accordingly, the abundance and fraction of TRB and seven TRG in different unit operations of these WWTP were analytically measured and modeled using a mass balance approach widely used for AS design. Based on the model, the AS process of the different WWTP neither amplified nor attenuated the TRB and TRG fractions. Of the TRG tested, the ribosomal protection genes, tet(O) and tet(W) were the most abundant, along the treatment train of the WWTP, on all sampling dates and sampling locations. Significant amounts of TRB and TRG were discharged in the effluent streams. Notably, in selected samples, the fraction of TRB increased in response to ultraviolet disinfection of treated wastewater compared to chlorination. This study therefore implicates wastewater treatment processes as significant point sources of tetracycline resistance determinants to the environment, and provides a mathematical basis to compute the production capacity of these determinants in the AS process.
本研究的总体目标是量化三个污水处理厂（WWTP）中活性污泥（AS）工艺增强或衰减四环素耐药菌（TRB）和四环素耐药基因（TRG）的倾向。因此，使用广泛用于 AS 设计的质量平衡方法分析测量了这些 WWTP 中不同单元操作中 TRB 和七种 TRG 的丰度和分数。基于该模型，不同 WWTP 的 AS 工艺既没有增强也没有衰减 TRB 和 TRG 分数。在所测试的 TRG 中，核糖体保护基因 tet(O) 和 tet(W)是最丰富的，沿着 WWTP 的处理链，在所有采样日期和采样地点都是如此。大量的 TRB 和 TRG 被排放到污水流出物中。值得注意的是，在选定的样本中，与氯化相比，经处理废水的紫外线消毒会导致 TRB 的分数增加。因此，本研究将废水处理过程确认为向环境中释放四环素耐药决定因素的重要点源，并为计算 AS 工艺中这些决定因素的产生能力提供了数学基础。
