Assessment of Ocean Waste Disposal. Task 5. Human Health Impacts of Waste Constituents. 2. Pathogens and Antibiotic- and Heavy Metal-Resistant Bacteria

摘要

Disposal of wastes in the ocean has been practiced by coastal nations for many decades. All areas of the ocean have been subject to disposal use, including estuaries, nearshore, open shelf, and deep ocean sites. Until recently, it was believed that pathogenic bacteria did not survive for any significant period of time in estuarine and marine environments. Scientists and public health workers never bothered to ask the question 'could viable, virulent pathogens be present in water samples even though they could not be detected by conventional plating methods.' Our laboratory has answered this question in the affirmative for several bacterial pathogens, and this will be discussed in detail. What follows in the report is a description of potentially harmful constituents of wastes, ways in which those constituents could reach humans, known incidents of human disease contracted from wastes, detection of waste-borne disease agents, management technologies, and monitoring and predictive technologies. Since the report is not just a review of the literature, not all known literature has been discussed. However, every attempt has been made to include very relevant material, regardless of its age. What follows then is both a literature review and a position paper.