On-site pilot testing of hospital wastewater ozonation to reduce pharmaceutical residues and antibiotic-resistant bacteriaShow others and affiliations
2021 (English)In: Antibiotics, E-ISSN 2079-6382, Vol. 10, no 6, article id 684
Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Hospital sewage constitutes an important point source for antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria due to the high antibiotic use. Antibiotic resistance can develop and cause problems in sewage systems within hospitals and municipal wastewater treatment plants, thus, interventions to treat hospital sewage on-site are important. Ozonation has proven effective in treating relatively clean wastewater, but the effect on untreated wastewater is unclear. Therefore, we piloted implementation of ozonation to treat wastewater in a tertiary hospital in Uppsala, Sweden. We measured active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and antibiotic-resistant Enterobacteriaceae using selective culturing pre-and post-ozonation. Comparing low (1 m3 /h) and high (2 m3 /h) flow, we obtained a 'dose-dependent' effect of API reduction (significant reduction of 12/29 APIs using low and 2/29 APIs using high flow, and a mean reduction of antibiotics of 41% using low vs. 6% using high flow, 25% vs. 6% for all APIs). There was no significant difference in the amount of antibiotic-resistant Enterobacteiaceae pre-and post-ozonation. Our results demonstrate that ozonation of untreated wastewater can reduce API content. However, due to the moderate API decrease and numerous practical challenges in the on-site setting, this specific ozonation system is not suitable to implement at full scale in our hospital.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
MDPI, 2021. Vol. 10, no 6, article id 684
Keywords [en]
Antibiotic resistance, API, Drug residues, Environment, Ozone treatment, Pharmaceuticals, Sewage treatment
National Category
Environmental Sciences Microbiology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-185622DOI: 10.3390/antibiotics10060684ISI: 000665546500001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85108553817OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-185622DiVA, id: diva2:1576579
2021-07-012021-07-012024-07-04Bibliographically approved