WINTER 2025 OREGON STATE ENGINEERING 2 An Oregon State University researcher will receive $2.35 million from the Environmental Protection Agency to explore what happens to antibiotics, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and their genes after they reach wastewater systems throughout the United States. The work by Tala Navab-Daneshmand, associate professor of environmental engineering, is part of a $9 million federal effort to learn more about the resistance that pathogens develop to the drugs used to combat them. EXPLORING WASTEWATER’S ROLE IN ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANCE The EPA describes antimicrobial resistance in the environment as a growing health concern, especially as bacteria and their antibiotic-resistance genes spread into surface water. The microbes and genes can travel freely among people, animals, and the environment, and the result is that certain infections become less responsive to medicine. Wastewater treatment facilities are a major receptor and source for antibiotic-resistant bacteria and antibiotic-resistance genes, the EPA says. The facilities collect a blend of pathogens, resistance genes, and antimicrobial drug residues from a
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