An Oregon State University researcher will receive $2.35 million from the Environmental Protection Agency to explore what happens to antibiotics, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and their genes after they reach wastewater systems throughout the United States.
An Oregon State University researcher will receive $2.35 million from the Environmental Protection Agency to explore what happens to antibiotics, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and their genes after they reach wastewater systems throughout the United States.
The work by Tala Navab-Daneshmand of the OSU College of Engineering is part of a $9 million federal effort to learn more about the resistance that pathogens develop to the drugs used to combat them.
The EPA describes antimicrobial resistance in the environment as a growing health concern, especially as bacteria and their antibiotic-resistance genes spread into surface water. The microbes and genes can travel freely among people, animals and the environment, and the result is that certain infections become less responsive to medicine.
Read more at: Oregon State University
Photo Credit: Karl Maasdam
