Public Engagement

The increasing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is one of the most serious threats to public health. It is therefore suitable and gratifying that the Center for Urban and Rural Affairs (CURA) at the University of Minnesota has sponsored a study on "Municipal Wastewater Treatment: A Novel Opportunity to Slow the Proliferation of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria?" and published an account of the findings in the Fall 2006 issue of the CURA Reporter. The report is available online at http://www.cura.umn.edu/reporter/06-Fall/LaParaetal.pdf.

The report gives a sophisticated but layperson's-level overview of antibiotic resistance, its origins, biological mechanisms, and dangers. The study was designed to determine whether standard municipal wastewater treatment is adequate to remove resistant bacteria from the water supply. The disturbing answer is "No." Even from a good municipal system, trillions of resistant bacteria are released into the water supply each day. The report suggests an additional step—sand filtration—that should be used, and points out that thermophilic (high-temperature) anaerobic digestion, though more costly, may be even more effective.

Implementing such additional purification steps may be costly, but the inability to treat bacterial infections due to antibiotic resistance will be a lot more costly. We may hope that University researchers will engage with government agencies and politicians to work out viable solutions to this problem.

It is interesting to note that the investigators include faculty, graduate students, an undergrad and a postdoc from a range of departments and colleges at the University of Minnesota: Civil Engineering; Soil, Water, and Climate; the College of Biological Sciences; and the Biotechnology Institute. Such interdisciplinary collaboration is necessary to solve real-world problems. Now they may need to drag some political scientists and economists into the mix.