Microbial Safety in Water Resources

Water scarcity is the lack of sufficient water resources to meet the demands of water usage. As more countries become water-scarce, alternative water sources have to be tapped into to meet the demands of various sectors including domestic, agriculture and industries. Alternative water sources can include treated wastewater or groundwater supplies that are subjected to surface contamination. Despite the increasingly complex and challenging nature of the water sources, most countries continue to adopt treatment technologies developed many decades ago and regulations that are limited to testing for coliforms and heterotrophic bacteria counts.
Emerging microbial contaminants, including antibiotic resistant pathogens, their associated mobile resistome and human enteric viruses, can impose a more direct relevance to public health. However, their prevalence and abundance in the water sources are not well-monitored. Neither were there sufficient assessment performed to determine if the conventional or up-and-coming water and wastewater treatment processes are capable of removing these contaminants to levels below acceptable microbial risks. The fate and persistence of these emerging microbial contaminants during intervention procedures (e.g. chlorination, ultraviolet) and upon dissemination through the treated water product into the environment should be well-elucidated.

This proposed Research Topic aims to solicit papers that span across disciplines in microbiology, water quality chemistry and engineering, to provide innovative insights to address the above stated knowledge gaps pertaining to the emerging microbial contaminants.