Airplane sewage may be helping antibiotic-resistant microbes spread
Sewage from airplanes serves as a melting pot for a globally sourced group of gut microbes. Now, a study suggests that such waste is loaded with bacteria resistant to antibiotics along with a smorgasbord of genes that confer drug resistance. That means airplane waste could be helping to fuel the spread of antibiotic resistance around the world. In a survey of airplane sewage from five German airports, around 90 percent of 187 E. coli isolated and tested were resistant to at least one antibiotic. For comparison, between 45 and 60 percent of these common gut dwellers collected from inlets to German wastewater treatment plants were drug resistant, the scientists found. And E. coli from airplane sewage was far more likely than that from municipal wastewater to be resistant to three or more antibiotics, researchers report in the Dec. 3 Environmental Science & Technology. “This is really important work,” says Amy Pruden, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg who was not involved with...