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Changes in Sewage Sludge Chemical Signatures During a COVID-19 Community Lockdown, Part 1: Traffic, Drugs, Mental Health, and Disinfectants.

ABSTRACT: The early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated shutdowns disrupted many aspects of daily life and thus caused changes in the use and disposal of many types of chemicals. While records of sales, prescriptions, drug overdoses, and so forth provide data about specific chemical uses during this time, wastewater and sewage sludge analysis can provide a more comprehensive overview of chemical changes within a region. We analyzed primary sludge from a wastewater-treatment plant in Connecticut, USA, collected March 19 to June 30, 2020. This time period encompassed the first wave of the pandemic, the initial statewide stay at home order, and the first phase of reopening. We used liquid chromatography-high-resolution mass spectrometry and targeted and suspect screening strategies to identify 78 chemicals of interest, which included pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs, disinfectants, ultraviolet (UV) filters, and others. We analyzed trends over time for the identified chemicals using linear trend analyses and multivariate comparisons (p < 0.05). We found trends related directly to the pandemic (e.g., hydroxychloroquine, a drug publicized for its potential to treat COVID-19, had elevated concentrations in the week following the implementation of the US Emergency Use Authorization), as well as evidence for seasonal changes in chemical use (e.g., increases for three UV-filter compounds). Though wastewater surveillance during the pandemic has largely focused on measuring severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 RNA concentrations, chemical analysis can also show trends that are important for revealing the public and environmental health effects of the pandemic. Environ Toxicol Chem 2021;00:1-14. © 2021 SETAC.

SUBMITTER: Nason SL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8653241 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Disinfectants are routinely used in human environments to control and prevent the transmission of microbial disease, and this is particularly true during the current COVID-19 crisis. However, it remains unclear whether the increased disinfectant loadings to wastewater treatment plants facilitate the dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in sewage sludge microbiomes. Here, we investigated the impacts of benzalkonium chlorides (BACs), widely used disinfectants, on ARGs profiles and microbial community structures in sewage sludge by using high-throughput quantitative PCR and Illumina sequencing. A total of 147 unique ARGs and 39 mobile genetic elements (MGEs) were detected in all sewage sludge samples. Our results show that exposure to BACs disinfectants at environmentally relevant concentrations significantly promotes both the diversity and absolute abundance of ARGs in sludge microbiomes, indicating the co-selection of ARGs by BACs disinfectants. The enrichment of ARGs abundance varied from 2.15-fold to 3.63-fold compared to controls. In addition, BACs exposure significantly alters bacterial and protistan communities, resulting in dysbiosis of the sludge microbiota. The Mantel test and Procrustes analysis confirm that bacterial communities are significantly correlated with ARGs profiles under BACs treatments. The structural equation model explains 83.8 % of the total ARGs variation and further illustrates that the absolute abundance of MGEs exerts greater impacts on the variation of absolute abundance of ARGs than microbial communities under BACs exposure, suggesting BACs may promote antibiotic resistance by enhancing the horizontal gene transfer of ARGs across sludge microbiomes. Collectively, our results provide new insights into the proliferation of antibiotic resistance through disinfectant usage during the pandemic and highlight the necessity to minimize the environmental release of disinfectants into the non-target environment for combating antibiotic resistance.

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Changes in Sewage Sludge Chemical Signatures During a COVID-19 Community Lockdown, Part 1: Traffic, Drugs, Mental Health, and Disinfectants.

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