“Nightmare Bacteria” Found in Southern California Sewage Treatment Plants

EPA Researchers find strain of a super-lethal superbug in LA wastewater treatment plant. Coined the “nightmare bacteria” by federal officials, carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, kills up to half of those who are unlucky enough to contract it.

Researchers at the Environmental Protection Agency recently found something in a Los Angeles sewage plant that should not be in a sewage plant. Amid millions of gallons of raw sewage that Southern Californians spew into the sewer plants every day, there was a strain of a super-lethal super bug floating around–the same one that sickened seven people and killed two in a Los Angeles hospital last year. And where does that treated waste go afterwards? Straight into the ocean, where surfers and swimmers are frolicking around with their mouths open. Of course, it’s been treated, though, so it should be ok, right? Wrong.

Every now and then, it’s much worse than ear and sinus infections. Last year, just after Christmas, a 71-year-old life-long surfer from San Diego died when he contracted a raging staph infection from surfing in contaminated water after a week of hard rain. Just a few months ago, in fact, I got some weird infection in my elbow that inflated my entire arm, gave me a fever of 105, and just for good measure, hit me with a seizure of some kind while I lay in my bed with no health insurance. The water here is, for lack of a few better words, fucking disgusting. I have since purchased the cheapest insanely expensive health insurance I could find. America!

But let’s get back to the superbugs the EPA found. According to the LA Times, sewage plants can’t kill them. That’s because almost nothing can–in fact, it has been coined the “nightmare bacteria” by federal officials. Carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae, or CRE because no one wants to type that more than once, survives nearly all known antibiotics, and it kills up to half of those who are unlucky enough to contract it.  The reason CRE can survive the barrage of antibiotics we’ve created is because hospital sewage contains not only waste from patients with infections that are already relatively drug resistant, but super high levels of the antibiotics that are supposed to be treating them. When the sewage all meets up and mixes in the treatment plants, the weakest of the bacteria is killed off, and the stronger ones survive. Then they reproduce at an alarming rate, trading genes with other bugs and creating more and more so-called superbugs. For some strange reason, after the EPA found CRE living in treatment plants, they didn’t test the water that was being pumped into the ocean.

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Taxonomy

• Public Health
• Wastewater Treatment
• Public Health