Comparative wastewater virome analysis with different enrichment methods.

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has proven its value for public health. Physical concentration of virus particles is a crucial step for WBE to permit a sensitive and unbiased characterization of the catchment virome. Here we evaluate five different virion concentration techniques, including polyethylene glycol precipitation (PEG), vacuum-based direct capture (VDC), ultrafiltration (UF), NanoTrap® (NT), and membrane adsorption (MEM) for their suitability to concentrate a wide variety of viral taxa from raw wastewater for PCR detection and sequencing-based metagenomic readouts.

Macro- and microplastics in composts from municipal solid waste industrial composting Plants in Uganda.

Organic fertilizer use constitutes one of the main pathways through which (micro)-plastics enter the environment. However, little is known about the extent of plastic contamination in biowaste composts from Sub-Saharan Africa, where municipal biowaste collection involves minimal to no source separation. This study assessed macro- and microplastic contamination in composts from two Clean Development Mechanism composting facilities in Uganda processing mixed municipal solid waste for agricultural use.

Seasonally recurring patterns of dominant Crenothrix spp. in a European alluvial drinking water well: Significance and potential indicator role.

Iron and manganese (Fe/Mn) often lead to aesthetic quality issues in water supply. Strong and problematic black-brown particle formation was persistently observed in an alluvial drinking water well, even though oxygen enrichment probes, intended for in situ i.e.

Prevalence of Antibiotic Resistance Genes in Differently Processed Smoothies and Fresh Produce from Austria.

Plant-derived foods are potential vehicles for microbial antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), which can be transferred to the human microbiome if consumed raw or minimally processed. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence and the amount of clinically relevant ARGs and mobile genetic elements (MGEs) in differently processed smoothies (freshly prepared, cold-pressed, pasteurized and high-pressure processed) and fresh produce samples (organically and conventionally cultivated) to assess potential health hazards associated with their consumption. The MGE and the class 1 integron-integrase gene were detected by probe-based qPCR in concentrations up to 10 copies/mL in all smoothies, lettuce, carrots and a single tomato sample.

Feasibility study of electrodialysis as an ammonium reuse process for covering the nitrogen demand of an industrial wastewater treatment plant.

Electrodialysis (ED) is a cost-effective membrane technology used is a variety of fields for desalination and concentration. This feasibility study explores the potential of ED as an NH-N recovery technology from anaerobic digestate liquor (ADL), and the use of the concentrate as a nitrogen source in an industrial wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). Three neighboring WWTPs were the focus of this study: Two municipal WWTPs A and B, operating anaerobic sludge stabilization, and a pulp & paper WWTP C, utilizing urea as a nitrogen source.

MiDAS 5: Global diversity of bacteria and archaea in anaerobic digesters.

Anaerobic digestion of organic waste into methane and carbon dioxide (biogas) is carried out by complex microbial communities. Here, we use full-length 16S rRNA gene sequencing of 285 full-scale anaerobic digesters (ADs) to expand our knowledge about diversity and function of the bacteria and archaea in ADs worldwide. The sequences are processed into full-length 16S rRNA amplicon sequence variants (FL-ASVs) and are used to expand the MiDAS 4 database for bacteria and archaea in wastewater treatment systems, creating MiDAS 5.

Environmental microbiome diversity and stability is a barrier to antimicrobial resistance gene accumulation.

When antimicrobial resistant bacteria (ARB) and genes (ARGs) reach novel habitats, they can become part of the habitat's microbiome in the long term if they are able to overcome the habitat's biotic resilience towards immigration. This process should become more difficult with increasing biodiversity, as exploitable niches in a given habitat are reduced for immigrants when more diverse competitors are present. Consequently, microbial diversity could provide a natural barrier towards antimicrobial resistance by reducing the persistence time of immigrating ARB and ARG.

Estimating actual SARS-CoV-2 infections from secondary data.

Eminent in pandemic management is accurate information on infection dynamics to plan for timely installation of control measures and vaccination campaigns. Despite huge efforts in diagnostic testing of individuals, the underestimation of the actual number of SARS-CoV-2 infections remains significant due to the large number of undocumented cases. In this paper we demonstrate and compare three methods to estimate the dynamics of true infections based on secondary data i.

Linking antibiotic resistance gene patterns with advanced faecal pollution assessment and environmental key parameters along 2300 km of the Danube River.

The global spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the environment is a growing health threat. Large rivers are of particular concern as they are highly impacted by wastewater discharge while being vital lifelines serving various human needs. A comprehensive understanding of occurrence, spread and key drivers of AMR along whole river courses is largely lacking.

Waste to energy, indispensable cornerstone for circular economy: A mini-review.

This mini-review aims at proving that waste-to-energy (WtE) is an essential cornerstone for circular economy (CE). Based on literature, the history of thermal waste treatment over the last 150 years is investigated, from open burning to WtE with resource recovery and final sink function. The results show that in the past incineration solved the issues it was designed for but often created new and sometimes even worse problems: The introduction of incineration in the 19th century improved urban sanitation, decreased waste volume and prolonged operational life of landfills.

Have genetic targets for faecal pollution diagnostics and source tracking revolutionized water quality analysis yet?

The impacts of nucleic acid-based methods - such as PCR and sequencing - to detect and analyze indicators, genetic markers or molecular signatures of microbial faecal pollution in health-related water quality research were assessed by rigorous literature analysis. A wide range of application areas and study designs has been identified since the first application more than 30 years ago (>1100 publications). Given the consistency of methods and assessment types, we suggest defining this emerging part of science as a new discipline: genetic faecal pollution diagnostics (GFPD) in health-related microbial water quality analysis.

Improving waste management by focussing on goals: A mini review of the publication sector.

The rationale for this article is that often, decision-makers in waste management (wm) tend to neglect goals and confuse them with means like circular economy or waste hierarchy. Because clear goals are crucial for developing effective wm strategies, the objectives of this mini review are (1) to clarify wm goals in a historical context by a literature review, (2) to investigate how (a) these goals have been observed in general scientific publishing and (b) specifically in () and (3) to recommend measures for better consideration of wm goals by the publication sector. Based on general as well as specific bibliographic analyses of databases in Scopus and Google Scholar, the study confirms that little attention was given to wm goals in scientific publishing.

Prediction of hospitalisations based on wastewater-based SARS-CoV-2 epidemiology.

Wastewater-based epidemiology is widely applied in Austria since April 2020 to monitor the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. With a steadily increasing number of monitored wastewater facilities, 123 plants covering roughly 70 % of the 9 million population were monitored as of August 2022. In this study, the SARS-CoV-2 viral concentrations in raw sewage were analysed to infer short-term hospitalisation occupancy.

50 years of design and operation of large wastewater treatment plant conferences. A history of innovation and development.

Large wastewater treatment plants (>50,000 population equivalents) treat more than 80% of the wastewater treated on a global scale, today it might be even >90%. They therefore provide the most relevant contribution to water protection from urban and industrial wastewater. This was already the case in 1971 when academics realised that progress in the scientific community alone will not succeed in a rapid transfer of research results to practitioners in design and operation of these plants.

The leakage of sewer systems and the impact on the 'black and odorous water bodies' and WWTPs in China.

China has achieved significant progress on wastewater treatment and aquatic environmental protection. However, leakage (in- and exfiltration) of sewer systems is still an issue. By using the statistical data of water and wastewater in 2016 in China, and the person loads (PLs) of water and wastewater in Singapore, the leakage fractions of hydraulic flow, organic carbon (COD), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) mass loading, and in-sewer COD biological removal in the sewer systems of China (except Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan), Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing were reported for the first time.

Structural redundancy of data from wastewater treatment systems. Determination of individual balance equations.

Although data reconciliation is intensely applied in process engineering, almost none of its powerful methods are employed for validation of operational data from wastewater treatment plants. This is partly due to some prerequisites that are difficult to meet including steady state, known variances of process variables and absence of gross errors. However, an algorithm can be derived from the classical approaches to data reconciliation that allows to find a comprehensive set of equations describing redundancy in the data when measured and unmeasured variables (flows and concentrations) are defined.

Dynamic mass balancing for wastewater treatment data quality control using CUSUM charts.

Mass balancing is a widely used tool for data quality control in wastewater treatment. It can effectively detect systematic errors in data. To overcome the limitations of the mean balancing error as a measure of data quality, a well established method for statistical process control (the CUSUM chart) is adopted for application on the error vector of balancing data.