soil microbiology – Livestock and Poultry Environmental Learning Community

A brief summary of the manuscript, Antimicrobial-resistant bacterial populations and antimicrobial resistance genes obtained from environments impacted by livestock and municipal waste (Agga et al., 2015)

Key Points

Antibiotic resistance is naturally occurring in almost any environment, making it difficult to determine what is the true human health risk associated with any change in environmental bacterial populations or genes.
This study found higher concentrations of resistant bacteria in both treated municipal wastewater and livestock wastes than are naturally present in soil or water.
Municipal wastewater samples contained a wider variety of antibiotic-resistant genes than were present in livestock wastes.

Continue reading “Antibiotic resistance higher in environments impacted by human or animal waste.”

Germs are everywhere, some resistant to medical treatment

When I was a kid, I remember being called inside for lunch on a summer day and hearing, “Wash your hands! You’ve been playing in the dirt!” Of course, we all grew up knowing that dirty hands can spread germs. But, I didn’t know until I was much older that the same soil that made my hands dirty was also the source of some pretty amazing medicines. Continue reading