Superbug Found After Sewage Spill In Florida

A powerful ‘last resort’ antibiotic is becoming less powerful for fighting illness as a result of sewage spills, researchers say.

The study from University of South Florida (USF) researchers, published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, focused on a 2014 sewage line break in St. Petersburg, FL, which saw untreated wastewater flood into Boca Ciega Bay at a rate of 250 to 500 gallons per minute.

Researchers sampled water soil for seven weeks after the rupture. They “found a strain of bacteria, called Enterococcus faecium” in their samples, Florida Today reported. They found that the bacteria is “resistant to vancomycin, a last-resort antibiotic against severe and multidrug-resistant infections.”

Bacteria with this kind of resistance had already been found in raw sewage from hospitals, but it is rarely found in other settings.

“USF's findings portend another ecological threat to waters periodically doused with sewage, such as the Indian River Lagoon, where some dolphins and other wildlife already harbor antibiotic resistant bacteria,” Florida Today reported.

As if these findings weren’t scary enough, there’s even more bad news.

“The vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE) was found to harbor what are called vanA genes, which can spread vancomycin resistance to other kinds of bacteria,” Florida Today reported. “The researchers found that high levels of VRE and vanA genes lasted in the environment for about two weeks after the spill, then diminished steadily.”

Valerie Harwood, a professor at USF and a study co-author, urged people to consider the findings before they decide when to swim.

“Most VRE are confined to hospitals, but detecting them in waters of the Tampa Bay community is quite concerning. People need to be aware of what may be entering the water after heavy rains, accidental spills, or after intentional sewage releases,” she said in a statement.

Suzanne Young, a PhD student at USF who worked on the study, explained that the findings have wide-ranging implications.

"I think we are worried that we're seeing evidence of this spread outside of hospitals," she said, per Florida Today. "I think if we're seeing it in Tampa, we're going to see it everywhere else."

For similar stories visit Water Online’s Source Water Contamination Solutions Center.