‘Superbugs’ found breeding in sewage plants | Hacker News Reader

‘Superbugs’ found breeding in sewage plants

news.rice.edu

115 pointsbra-ket33 comments

Whenever I read a story like this (there have been dozens lately), I simply don't have the background to determine how big of a problem this is going to be. Are these bugs antibiotic resistant just to current antibiotics? Is the only reason we have nothing that currently kills them is because it's not profitable for research into fighting them? Basically, what I'd love to know is are we on the cusp of a new Black Plague type of scenario with antibiotic resistant bugs or is it simply a problem that we haven't been working on?

I read somewhere a while back that no one has really been focusing on new forms of antibiotics because the old ones worked, and it's not profitable for pharmaceuticals to research it, as it's the type of drug a person takes for a limited time only (aka non-chronic) so the profit potential is much lower than say AIDS medication. Not sure how much truth there is to that however...

"what I'd love to know is are we on the cusp of a new Black Plague type of scenario with antibiotic resistant bugs or is it simply a problem that we haven't been working on?"

The answer to the first question is: quite possibly, but with something like tuberculosis instead of the plague. Less immediately scary, but more harmful: resistant forms of more common bacteria will create serious risks when undergoing any sort of surgical procedure. We could get back to the days when your biggest risk of surgery was dying from infection afterward.

The answer to you second question is: no, we haven't really been working on it. But the big problem is that we can't just invent new classes of antibiotics overnight. If one of these strains takes off, things will get a lot worse before they get better.

Could UV light be used at waste plants and hospitals to help prevent this kind of bacteria from spreading?

Yes, UV light would be more effective than chlorination at killing most of this stuff. But, you know...good luck convincing people to add expensive UV systems to their sewage effluent.

Apparently there is anyway movement to UV, as it is safer than handling/dealing with chlorine (at least, this is what someone tells me about the industry in the US).

UV is certainly easier to deploy than chlorine gas (a UV leak won't poison everyone in the room via gas inhalation), but it's still dangerous at the scales used to sterilize large quantities of water.

The bigger problem than either is that AFAIK, few places bother to sterilize their effluent. I'm not even sure if San Francisco bothers to do that, actually...

UV is used in some wastewater reclamation plants, it is the new how shit as of about 10 years ago. But with all things the volume of water being treated determines which processes are used, I know of a UV only plant that processes 37million gallons a day via UV. Thirty minutes away at a larger facility that treats 150million gallons a day they use chlorine only. These are massive facilities, and to change the processes used is a massive undertaking, expecting them to be able to pivot over night is not realistic.

New Scientist has an article in this weeks number about sunshine and fresh air working as "antibiotics", and how the use of air and light could reduce the risk of infections in hospitals.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029470.700-fresh-air...

For some information on the scope of the problem, I found this report useful. http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/threat-report-2013/

Frontline did an episode that covers resistance and the lack of new antibiotic drug development. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hunting-the-nightmar...

One would hope that antibiotic resistant bacteria would be outcompeted in sewage by other bacteria with more mundane selection pressures.

Alternatively, the sewage actually has residual antibiotics in it. A cursory Google indicates this may be the case. They ought to be removed from the sewage by treatment.

> They ought to be removed from the sewage by treatment.

The bacteries were found in a sewage treatment plant.

Even if you assume that there's a practical way to get rid of the anitbiotics at the plant (enzymes, maybe?), the bugs and drugs were in the sewage all along up to that point, allowing AB resistance to develop in the pipes upstream.

There's more than just antibiotics in wastewater, google for studies relating to the feminization of fish due to the residual levels of anti depressants in wastewater. The processes used determine what gets removed from the water. Most facilities use aerobic breeding zones, forcing extremely high volumes of air into the water to allow from friendly microbes that actually end up doing most of the real work digesting the waste. Microbes don't eat everything, so expecting them to eat the all of the unwanted products in the sewage is not going to happen. To get everything, you would need first research to identify bugs that eat the particular thing your wanted disposed of, and then a new zone at treatment plants for that process. Its real easy to say yeah they should remove this, but when you get into the details to understand why its not happening you begin to see this is a massive undertaking.

Um, it isn't anti-depressants that are feminizing fish. That doesn't even make sense. It is synthetic estrogens, ie pee from women taking birth control pills. Also a few other things, bisphenol A, and certain types of natural and synthetic steroids that are byproducts of agricultural run-off and cattle farming.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100729122332.ht...

Thank your for the correction, I always make at least one mistake before I've had coffee.

So... not only can some bacteria develop this immunity, they can transfer it to other bacteria? (kinda like a torrent isn't it?) That's so cool (albeit very dangerous for us).

Though if you look at it this way: Bacteria have been researching on vaccines against anti-biotics in their built-in genetic labs. And when a group of them finally had a break through, they started distributing it pretty fast!

Looks like they're doing a better job of research and knowledge dissemination than us... Still think it's ok for journals to hinder sharing of knowledge by taxing it and thus increasing the cost of research??

> Still think it's ok for journals to hinder sharing of knowledge by taxing it and thus increasing the cost of research??

What the hell does that have to do with anything?

Beta-lactamases are now pretty much everywhere, but the difference with NDM-1 is that it's not inhibited by the standard defence against beta-lactamases, clavulanic acid.

With these plasmid being traded around out in the wild, the fear is that we might soon see all beta-lactams become useless, like penicillin is now.

Interseting. Btw... should triclosan and similar be regulated / limited?

Well that's it.

No more playing in the sewage for me.

or drinking the water that's released from the sewage plant after treatment, or eating the food grown with the solid waste as fertiliser.

That last is actually something of a real concern.

Farmers use manure (non-composted, hence, unsterilized) for fertilizer, but new regulations in the US require many months (I think as many as nine) between manure application and harvesting for food crops. For most crops this is sufficiently long that it makes manure untenable as a fertilizer.

There are alternatives, exclusive of chemical fertilizers, including compost (which is sterilized by the heat). However these have higher costs, which is what it all comes down to.

I have this notion of sewage plant workers: they NEVER get sick while working over multi-year/decade periods at the plant. It's all anecdotal, because it was from a quote in an article, and you don't know if the guy was telling the truth, but it stuck with me for some reason. Who makes a claim like that and then connects it to working at a sewage treatment plant? I think originally I read about it in a NY Times article about the sewage treatment plant workers' union a few years back but I currently can't find it.

I was surprised to find this in wikipedia [1]:

    A strain of bacteria, or any microorganism that causes illness or has a superficial resemblance to an insect or bug

I think it's quite confusing to call bacteria, bug. But I'm not a native speaker. Is this common usage?

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug

When fusion power comes online (20 years hopefully?) could we simply boil all of this sewage?

Is the idea of near unlimited electricity a pipe-dream or do we have a chance of it becoming a reality in the near future?

Isn't there a possibility that the bacterial will eventually evolve into something that is resistant to UV radiation treatment?

I don't think there is any indication that fusion power plants would produce electricity that is much cheaper than current methods - fuel (uranium) costs are a relatively small part of the cost of operating a fission plant (16%-28%) and fusion plants look like they will be very complex engineering systems so the capex costs are still going to be pretty high (look at ITER and that won't even try to generate electricity).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plan...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

I guess you could expose your sewage directly to the neutron flux of a fusion reactor.... :-)

Maybe just use treated sewage water as the secondary coolant in a bog-standard pressurized water reactor?

I'm not sure how many reactors you'd need to suck up a cities sewage supply though. Probably more than can be justified from a power demand perspective.

Couldn't this be fixed with some high powered UV lights? (Though I recall some interaction between sunlight & drinking water)

And wouldn't flouride/chlorine kill it?

Assuming that you live in a city and you’re a tad paranoid about all these stuff. What practical advice could be given? What could we do in an individual level?

one thing to note is, that a superbug's ability to resist multiple drugs, also can mean that due to its complex structure, its similar to a well written computer virus like Flame.

Meaning, on contact with human body, or other living animals, how it would react is still a matter about which very less is known, and very less is written.

On the bright side, compare it to the recent comet, which was touted to be the "Comet of the Year/Decade" for its expected brightness, if it survived the sun. Well it didn't, and we have a dud! So, compare that to human body, and superbug interaction. What will happen... is yet to be known .

We should send some of this stuff to Mars.

then all those antibiotics on Mars will be useless. Victory!

Surely the NSA will protect us from these too.

Not unless these superbugs are online.

BTW, as your karma should show you, HN has no sense of humor.

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