Welcome to the AquaticPollutants blog, where we post updates from TransNet and the 18 funded research projects. Check out the articles to stay up to date!
The study by REWA on the adsorption of pharmaceuticals from municipal wastewater effluent was published. It investigated the use of magnetite-pine bark (MPB) as a low-cost biosorbent for pharmaceutical removal from municipal wastewater.
The research project “SERPIC – Sustainable Electrochemical Reduction of contaminants of emerging concern and Pathogens in WWTP effluent for Irrigation of Crops” has demonstrated successfully that effluent of wastewater treatment plants can be safely used to irrigate crops.
The final PHARMASEA research consortium meeting was held in Heidelberg, Germany, on October 20-21, 2024, offering to all partners a valuable opportunity to think about the key milestones achieved over the past three years. Read more about the outcomes and results!
The project ARENA aimed to produce an overview of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), pathogenic bacteria (PB), and antibiotic (AB) contamination in fish farms with open (mariculture) and closed (RAS - Recirculating Aquaculture System) settings. Read more about their work!
Cultivation-based methods are the standard for microbiological water quality analysis today, but they don't tell the whole story. New methods, including cultivation-independent and molecular biological analysis, have opened up many previously unsolvable topics in microbiological water analysis. The SARA project used methods such as microbial source tracking and next-generation sequencing extensively, clearly demonstrating the added value of these methods.
SPARE-SEA objectives of measuring antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in oyster culture regions included specific experiments to understand the transfer of ARGs among oysters in the wild. For this, a common stock of specific pathogen free-oysters served as the basis for field experiments.
Join us for the next and final AquaticPollutants Roadshow at the IWA International Conference on Water Reuse and Reclamation in Cape Town in South Africa on 17 March 2025 from 11:00 - 12:30 and 14:30 - 16:00. The session connects Europe and Africa in a dialogue on progress and remaining gaps in tackling CECs and AMR in aquatic ecosystems.
We are looking forward to seeing you in Cape Town or online.
If you want to participate online, register here!
The final event of the ERA-Net Cofund AquaticPollutants took place from 22 to 23 October 2024. During the event, the 18 research projects and the transfer project AquaticPollutants TransNet presented their results from the last four years at DECHEMA in Frankfurt am Main. In addition, challenges and perspectives for the future were discussed in panel discussions.
On 28 August, 2024, AquaticPollutants took part in the WOrld Water Week with an online session: Safe Water - Addressing Challenges to Mitigate Stubborn Chemicals, Antimicrobial Resistance. Did you miss it? Here’s a quick recap!
The AquaticPollutants research project PHARMASEA has now preliminary results of the first large scale field investigation. The activities and results were presented at the EurOCEANS 2023. The project also performed different outreach activities, targeting many stakeholder groups. read all about it in this article!
Sustainable solutions for water treatment: This was the topic of the PhD day and workshop that the AquaticPollutants research project NanoTheC-Aba organized in collaboration with the AMROCE project. From May 22nd-23rd, 35 PhD students, researchers, professors and speakers came together to learn about the recent advances of the participating projects in the field of water remediation. In the end, the PhD Day showed that challenges are best faced together!
We're thrilled to announce the launch of something big – the AquaticPollutants Podcast. Hosted by Sarah Fieger and Ola Lawani from DECHEMA e.V. in Frankfurt, the coordinator of the AquaticPollutants transfer project, the podcast brings the topics of the ERA-NET Cofund AquaticPollutants right to your door (or preferred streaming platform).
The SPARE-SEA consortium observed a high prevalence of colistin resistant bacteria, particularly in Vibrio, in oysters across Europe. The team was able to decode a novel resistance mechanism based on a dgkA-eptA operon controlled by the RstA/RstB two component system, that was restricted to the Mediterranean (France, Spain).
In Ciudad Real at University Castilla La Mancha, the SERPIC project assembled all necessary components of the SERPIC treatment technology and commissioned them to a working prototype plant. The plant was used in a long-term field test to treat effluent of the municipal wastewater sewage plant. The experiments showed good results for the degradation of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) from the water.
An important aim of the SARA project is to compare the occurrence of antibiotic resistant bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes in Europe and Africa, and to assess the impact of climatic conditions. Exemplary results for E. coli as a general faecal indicator and extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) producing E. coli as an indicator of antibiotic resistant bacteria show a high percentage of resistant E. coli for Uganda. The reduction by wastewater treatment was examined.
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The AquaticPollutants research proejct REWA has been busy! Check out these three updates on successful pilot-scale testing of adsorbents for removal of CECs, a sampling Campaign in the closed Mustavaara mine and an e-course .
PRESAGE is focused on innovative decentralized wastewater treatments based on aerobic and anaerobic compact systems. Currently, the innovative technologies proposed, based mainly on compact membrane bioreactors designs, are being validated at different demosites treating black and grey water, and effluents from hospitals and an antibiotic production industry, in close collaboration with the industrial sector.
The findings of the NATURE project underscore the effectiveness of already implemented Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) in mitigating the discharge of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) at river catchment scale from wastewater to estuarine areas. Over a two-year period, the project conducted a comprehensive sampling campaign across seven NBS sites in three countries to ensure a realistic assessment.
Aquaculture is an important source for food, nutrition, income and livelihoods for millions of people around the globe. But intensive fish farming is often associated with pathogen outbreaks as high amounts of veterinary drugs are used globally. As in many other environments, mostly the application of antimicrobials triggers the development of (multi)resistant microbiota. This process might be fostered by co-selection as a consequence of the additional use of antiparasitics.
On December 11-12, 2023, the second AIHABs research consortium workshop took place in Braga, Portugal. It was a collaborative effort between the teams of TU Dublin and the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL) and was held at the INL in Braga. The workshop served as a platform for each participating team to present their progress since the inception of the AIHABs project.
At this year's Aquafarm Fair in Pordenone, ARENA organized a workshop. The fair represents the largest exhibition event and convention for sustainable aquaculture and fishing industry in Italy. Also three other AquaticPollutants research projects were at the fair: SPARE-SEA, PHARMASEA and NanoTheCAba.
In January, the AquaticPollutants research project ARENA performed sampling activities in a land-based recirculating aquaculture commercial fish farm located close to the Orbetello lagoon (South Tuscany, Italian West Coast). Why did they take these samples? And what are they doing with them?
Our Science Communication Innovation Challenge is over and the winners have been announced: The organisation H2O-People won with the idea of combining a social media campaign with a school project for the EU project iMERMAID. The aim is to inform the local population in the Mediterranean region about the toxic chemical pollution of the sea and thus ensure that the use of these chemicals is reduced in the long term.
During the FOREWARN Summer School from 15-16 June 2023, 8 students from Spain, France, Finland, Greece and Serbia came together in Dublin, Ireland. Their aim: Learning something about new tools to assess contaminants of emerging concern in the aquatic environment.
Organic and microbial contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) are important to addressin reclaimed water reuse projects. SERPIC presents a new methodology for the selection of the most representative CECs , in particular for the evaluation of the performance of a polishing treatment and the assessment of the risk for the environment and the irrigated crops.
Networking the #AquaticPollutants research projects that are focused on the #research and application of technologies for the removal of CECs, #AMR and pathogens from #wastewater – that is the aim of our Cross-Cutting Issue #3. On Wednesday, the projects met and discussed what they want to accomplish with this cross-cutting issue.
The Midterm Meeting of the ERA-NET Cofund AquaticPollutants took place in Alcalá de Henares (Spain) from 30 May to 1 June 2023. The focus was not only on the results of the different projects so far, but also on various networking activities and joint discussions.
The SPARE-SEA project has developed a game that allows everyone to test their knowledge of OysterLand, the place where the land meets the sea. It is a location where people, agriculture, and aquatic animals mix. It is also a place where bacteria are exchanged between land and sea and everything in between. Play OysterLand and join SPARE-SEA in looking at how antibiotic use influences the inhabitants of OysterLand.
In March, a team of the FOREWARN project took samplings in the Ebro Delta and in Albufera de València, both located in Spain, to investigates the levels of CECs, ARG, ARB, and emerging viruses together with physicochemical information and metadata about stressors. Read more about the sampling avtivities in the article.
As part of the ARENA project activities, two sampling campaigns were carried out during the summer and winter of 2022/2023 in the “charming pearl” of the Ligurian Riviera di Levante (Portovenere, Italy). What did the samples show? What further analyses will be done? Read more in the article.
How can microbial background influence the acquisition of new strains in the oyster microbiom? This is one of the question that Spare-Sea wants to answer. Read more about the work of Spare-Sea, what they reached in 2022 and what their plans for the future are.
Method harmonization, training of African partners, ongoing monitoring, and stakeholder forum meeting: The SARA project which determines the prevalence of, e.g., pathogenic viruses, microbial indicators and antibiotic resistance in wastewater, surface water, and coastal seawate can report a lot of progress!
In the beginning, the project consortium has held the planned Executive Board and General Assembly meetings via online platforms since travel was restricted as a result of the pandemic. Therefore, the partners were exhilirated to be able to finally meet at a physical REWA Workshop held in Tel-Hai College in Israel from 29 January to 1 February 2023. FInd out more about the project and the workshop.
The project Nature demonstrates the use of nature-based solutions (NBS) as management option for reducing the presence of antibiotics, antimicrobial resistance and pathogens in aquatic ecosystems. What they found out: The use of NBS as secondary or tertiary wastewater treatments results in a greater removal of antibiotics than conventional wastewater treatment solutions.
After 18 months from the beginning of the PHARMASEA project, preliminary results of the first large scale field investigation allow to characterize pharmaceuticals in seawater, sediments and biota from different trophic levels. Read more about the project's work in the article.
NanoTheCAba set itself the goal to deliver an energy efficient new integrated prototype system for water purification. Find out more about the system and what the project managed to do in the first 15 month in the article.
Find out about GreenWaterTech's recent progress of the water cleaning technologies they develop for the ultra-filtration prototype.
In summer and autumn 2022, AIHABs project conducted three water quality sampling campaigns in the Belesar Reservoir and the Miño Estuary in Spain. The three sampling campaigns concided with the periods before, during, and after the algal blooming season. What did the project find in the samples? And what will the obtained data be used for? Find out more in this article.
Water JPI is one of the Joint Programming Initiatives that set up the ERA-Net Cofund AquaticPollutants. We asked Esther Diez-Cebollero, the coordinator of Water JPI, what the tasks and goals of Water JPI in the Cofund are, why the transfer project is so important and what the future holds for the Cofund.
In our first deliverable, "Mapping of end-user groups and governance and synthesis of their demands for knowledge", we present the results of the stakeholder survey and show an overview of the knowledge gaps and knowledge demands of different stakeholder groups in the water sector.
The PRESAGE project has identified the organic micropollutants to be studied, which include antibiotics, and have already set up their treatment technologies. Read the article to find out more about their treatment approach and next research steps.
PHARMASEA is concentrating on the distribution of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) in coastal areas with the aim of developing needed risk assessment procedures. As a first step, they’ve already identified the 13 core APIs which will be the focus of the project’s experiments. See what else the consortium has accomplished so far and where you can look for updates.
The 1st work package of the TransNet project deals with identifying key water stakeholders and their knowledge demands. This research serves as the foundation for TransNet to improve the transfer and uptake of research results. We interviewed two of our partners about their research and its role in our project.
AMROCE is working to tackle the problem of AMR from another direction: instead of treating water resources, AMROCE aims to limit the use of antibiotics in the first place by developing novel antibiotic-free antimicrobial products.
The SERPIC project aims to develop a new electrochemical technology to treat urban wastewater so that compounds of emerging concern (CECs) are reduced to a level so that the water can be used for crop irrigation.
One of the main methods to exchange with the 18 funded projects is through the AquaticPollutants Core Synergy Forum – a group comprised of all 18 project coordinators, the ERA-Net Cofund Management Team and the TransNet project. This group met for the first time in March 2022 and kicked off the collaborative nature of the AquaticPollutants Cofund.
Why are oysters important in understanding the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB)? How may human activity influence the presence of bacteria in oyster seafood? This article from SPARE-SEA introduces the chosen oyster culture areas to be studied and outlines the first steps and results.
