Moving from the traditional paradigm of pathogen inactivation to controlling antibiotic resistance in water – Role of ultraviolet irradiation

water. But we need to think about disinfection differently now. Just killing microbes isn’t enough to guarantee safe water, because nasty genes can stick around even after treatment. Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are a huge worry; they’re what make microbes resistant to antibiotics in the first place. UV light has been widely used for disinfection and, more recently, for destroying ARGs. While traditional UV lamps are still the main way to do this, UV light emitting diodes (UV-LEDs) are new UV sources. We’re seeing more and more lab studies that show them as a real alternative. This review talks about how we’re currently using UV technology to control antibiotic resistance in water and wastewater treatment. UV-LEDs offer some great benefits over older UV lamps. So, we’re taking a close look at how UV-LED features, like single versus combined wavelengths, and how they operate, such as periodic, pulsed, or continuous light, pulse repetition frequencies, and duty cycle, affect things. We’re also checking out the type of organism and how it responds to the UV dose. Our goal is to pinpoint what research we still need to do to tackle future disinfection challenges. We’re also checking the energy efficiency of these UV processes, focusing on how well they actually disinfect. We’ve learned a lot from using UV lamps, and that experience can help us explore UV-LEDs for similar jobs, like fighting antibiotic resistance. This will help us figure out where to go next with our research. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.