Everything Aquatic

April 7, 2021

Is aquatic microbial pollution something the world needs to be alerted to?

Many of us have visited seaside locations and swum in its welcoming waters, but how much do we actually know about the impacts such activities have on our nation’s microbial resistance. A report by the European Centre for Environment and Human health (Leonard et al., 2015) found that people who access aquatic environments for recreational use experienced an identifiable exposure risk to bacteria such as E. coli. One lady who has always been interested in the relationship between aquatic microbes and human health is Anne Leonard. Known for her epidemiological studies into antimicrobial resistance and more recently her research into the risk bathers face when exposed to antibiotic resistant bacteria (Leonard et al., 2018), Anne is a keen researcher who works with organisations such as the Natural Environment Research Council (https://www.ecehh.org/people/anne-leonard/). In this episode of the ‘Everything Aquatic’ podcast, Anne tells us about her research and emphasises how important it is that we all have a basic understanding of the threat microbial pollution poses to human health. I further research into how plastics may impact such pollution and how dangerous increasing levels of resistance in aquatic environments can be; antibiotic medicines are often used to treat infections and overtime antibiotic resistance develops accelerated by the misuse and overuse of antibiotics (WHO, 2020). If we do nothing about this antibiotic resistance crisis, by 2050 more people will die from this than of cancer each year (Husain, 2020).