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Local Environmental Pollution Strongly Influences Culturable Bacterial Aerosols at an Urban Aquatic Superfund Site
journal contribution
posted on 2012-10-16, 00:00 authored by M. Elias Dueker, Gregory D. O’Mullan, Andrew R. Juhl, Kathleen
C. Weathers, Maria UriarteIn polluted environments, when microbial aerosols originate
locally,
species composition of the aerosols should reflect the polluted source.
To test the connection between local environmental pollution and microbial
aerosols near an urban waterfront, we characterized bacterial aerosols
at Newtown Creek (NTC), a public waterway and Superfund site in a
densely populated area of New York, NY, USA. Culturable bacterial
aerosol fallout rate and surface water bacterial concentrations were
at least an order of magnitude greater at NTC than at a neighboring,
less polluted waterfront and a nonurban coastal site in Maine. The
NTC culturable bacterial aerosol community was significantly different
in taxonomic structure from previous urban and coastal aerosol studies,
particularly in relative abundances of Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria.
Twenty-four percent of the operational taxonomic units in the NTC
overall (air + water) bacterial isolate library were most similar
to bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequences previously described in terrestrial
or aquatic environments contaminated with sewage, hydrocarbons, heavy
metals, and other industrial waste. This study is the first to examine
the community composition and local deposition of bacterial aerosols
from an aquatic Superfund site. The findings have important implications
for the use of aeration remediation in polluted aquatic environments
and suggest a novel pathway of microbial exposure in densely populated
urban communities containing contaminated soil and water.