Urban environments often conceal invisible threats to public health, and a recent study in La Paz, Bolivia, brings one such danger to light: the aerosolization of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Over two years, researchers explored how untreated sewage, industrial effluent, and stormwater runoff flowing through the city’s surface water canals contribute to the spread of ARGs in the air—a troubling finding in the global fight against antimicrobial resistance.
Using the novel Bobcat Dry Filter Air Sampler, scientists collected air samples during both rainy and dry seasons from locations near sewage-contaminated waterways. The bioaerosol samples contained E. coli—a key indicator of fecal contamination and ARGs associated with tetracyclines, fluoroquinolones, beta-lactams, and mobile integrons—genes that enable the transfer of resistance between bacteria - pointing to hospitals upstream and wastewater from the city’s general population as likely sources.
82% of the samples tested positive for ARGs, underscoring the scale of the problem.
This study paints a vivid picture of how poor sanitation and untreated wastewater in urban settings can create a dangerous cocktail of antimicrobial resistance spread - not just through water but also in the air we breathe.
Publication:
Antimicrobial resistance genes are enriched in aerosols near impacted urban surface waters in La Paz, Bolivia, Ginn et al., Environmental Research, 2021
