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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Graveyards can be a reservoir for antibiotic resistant bacteria:

[...]generally, cemeteries are places where corpses can decompose without posing a danger to public health. But sometimes—especially when sanitation and waste management services are poor—they can become environmental reservoirs of pollutants arising from human activities.

Among these pollutants are bacterial pathogens. These bacteria can be transported into groundwater when people live near a graveyard. The same communities—and visitors to a graveyard—can then be exposed to the pathogens via groundwater or surface water.

Decomposing bodies can add bacteria to the soil, but most importantly, they provide nutrients to the bacteria already present in the environment.

Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a microorganism that is commonly used to indicate the level of pollution in an environment, especially aquatic ones. This organism can be found in many places, including soil, water, food, and the intestines of humans and animals.

The presence of E. coli in the environment in large numbers can indicate faecal pollution. Some strains of this organism can also cause diseases such as diarrhoea, urinary tract infections and meningitis in newborn babies. The bacterium can also cause infection in other animals such as birds. Some strains have also been linked to disease outbreaks in developed and developing countries.

Many E. coli strains are resistant to antibiotics used to treat human diseases.

We wanted to find out whether cemeteries could harbour these resistant bacteria—a question that had not previously been answered.

In places with shallow water tables, the bacteria, together with other toxic biological waste arising from decomposing bodies, can contaminate water sources in nearby communities, representing a public health concern.

[...] We carried out research in South Africa to explore whether cemeteries could act as reservoirs of human pathogens that are resistant to numerous antibiotics, using E. coli as the indicator organism.

[...] We isolated E. coli in water samples collected from boreholes and surface water in [three] cemeteries and checked whether these E. coli strains had the potential to cause disease in humans. We also checked whether they were resistant to antibiotics commonly used to treat human infections.

In some cases, we found as many as over 2,400 E. coli cells in 100ml water samples, especially in the surface water samples. Water meant for drinking should contain zero E. coli in 100ml. The number of E. coli should not be more than 575 cells in 100ml of water for partial body contact or 235 in 100ml of water for full-body contact activities. E. coli was also isolated in some of the borehole water samples, although at lower concentrations.

We found that 42% of the E. coli obtained in this study had genes that could allow them to cause infection in humans.

And 87% of the E. coli isolated were resistant to at least one of the antibiotics tested, with 72% being resistant to more than three antibiotics. Four isolates were resistant to all the eight antibiotics tested.

Citation: Graveyards can be a reservoir for antibiotic resistant bacteria (2020, March 6) retrieved 6 March 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2020-03-graveyards-reservoir-antibiotic-resistant-bacteria.html

Original Submission