Fate and transport of evolving antibiotics and their removal using novel bio-oxidation technologies

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Estimated 17 billion litre/day of municipal wastewater 780,000 dry tonnes of sludge/biosolids were generated in 2015 from Canadian municipal wastewater plants (serving 25 million Canadians). The Canadian livestock also consume more than 1.6 million kilograms of antibiotics every year, and about 90% of these antibiotics are not entirely absorbed in the intestine of animals, resulting in their release to the environment. For the last decade, the Food and Drug Administration approved 10 new antibiotic drugs to circumvent multidrug/antibiotic resistance, but their current concentrations and toxicity in the environment has not been explored. In fact, the costs due to the antibiotic resistance can run into tens of billions of dollars for the Canadian citizens. This is a serious concern, as antibiotic discovery does not have a matching parallel path of study of their environmental effects which are exacerbated over time. In the proposed research, two different antibiotic classes: old (before 2000) and recently (after 2000) approved 3rd generation antibiotics, such as quinolones [ofloxacin (old) and gemofloxacin (new)] and carbapenems [imipenem (old) and biapenem (new)] have been selected to evaluate their concentrations, their toxicity and efficiency of current WWTPs to treat them. Likewise, the possibility of developing efficient, portable and retrofit systems for hospital effluents is proposed to minimize the release of the antibiotics residuals into the WWTPs. The proposed research program hence will comprise six components: 1) characterization, mass balance and development of the analytical methods performed by two M.Scs. for the two classes of antibiotics; 2) interactions-effects studies related to the antibiotics-metals (different oxidation states), antibiotics-humic acids-metals, antibiotics-antibiotics. antibiotics-salts (chlorides) at different pH, temperature, and ionic strength carried out by 2 Ph.Ds; 3) Two Ph.Ds. will work on advanced hybrid bio-oxidation treatment methods, comprising bioinspired, microbial, enzymatic, ultrasonication-persulfate and nanocomposite technologies; 4) Two M.Sc. student will perform ecotoxicological assessment using yeast estrogenicity/androgenicity assays and with representative species from different taxonomic and functional groups; 5) Prototype will be developed for the best performing technologies obtained from objective 2 by a M.Sc student for wastewater and hospital effluent streams and; 6) led by an M.Sc. student, will focus on the study of the economics of the wastewater treatment sector and further development of a software package for technical and economic evaluation enabling the assessment of the costs and operating revenues while removing antibiotics and other similar emerging contaminants. The HQP will be well trained in biochemistry, environmental engineering, analytical chemistry and microbiology and will be prepared for careers in municipal, public and private sector.