About River Watchers India
Our project addresses the alarming prevalence of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in the environment, using water bodies of Chennai (Tamil Nadu, India) as a case study, by developing a simple, cheap but comprehensive monitoring system enabled by citizen scientists.
It is important to obtain a detailed picture of water pollution in the waterways, across the seasons. In order to gather comprehensive data from numerous water bodies throughout the year, we must develop and standardize suitable proxy methods to monitor water quality parameters that closely correlate with ARGs (Ott et al. 2021). By training and motivating citizen scientists in sample collection and analysis, we can ensure their role in keeping the environment clean and producing comparable data sets and achieve our goal of comprehensive monitoring AMR in the water bodies of Chennai.
At the University of Warwick, a previous citizen science project, Know Your River, ran across England, UK.
River Watchers India Project Aims
The River Watchers India project aims to enable citizen scientists to monitor water bodies for pollution and the presence of AMR. It uses the water bodies of Chennai (Tamil Nadu, India) as a case study. We aim to develop a simple, cheap but comprehensive monitoring system that can be used by citizen scientists and allow AMR monitoring across the landscape in order to identify AMR hotspots. Methods for data collection will be developed and standardised. Sampling will occur across the seasons.
Through this comprehensive monitoring of AMR, a better understanding of resistance dynamics in Indian waterways can be built in order to help inform policy.
Source: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13717-021-00341-1
Research at the University of Warwick
At the University of Warwick, research has been progressing for several years on the impact of WWTP effluent discharge on the bacterial community of river water and sediment, with a particular focus on antibiotic resistant bacteria. It has been shown that there are higher numbers of antibiotic resistant bacteria downstream of a WWTP than upstream. Antibiotic resistant bacteria of clinical concern are amongst those bacteria found in river water.
Further reading
Borsetto, Chiara, Raguideau, Sébastien, Travis, Emma Rachel, Kim, Dae-Wi, Lee, Do-Hoon, Bottrill, Andrew R., Stark, Richard Jan, Song, Lijiang, Cha, Chang-Jun, Pearson, Jonathan M., Quince, Christopher, Singer, Andrew C., Wellington, Elizabeth M. H., 2021. Impact of sulfamethoxazole on a riverine microbiome. Water Research, 201
J. Delaney, S. Raguideau, J. Holden, L. Zhang, H.J. Tipper, G.L. Hill, U. Klumper, T. Zhang, R.S. James, E.R. Travis, M. J. Bowes, P.M. Hawkey, H. Söderström Lindström, C. Tang, W.H. Gaze, A. Mead, C. Quince, A.C. Singer, E.M.H. Wellington Impact of trimethoprim on the river microbiome and antimicrobial resistance Biorxiv, 133348