Evaluation of the environmental dynamics of fluoroquinolones in the water and sediment of the Billings-SP reservoir and its effect on the development of Escherichia coli
Contamination of water resources through the release of domestic, industrial and agricultural effluents alters water quality by taking pollutants of emerging interest into water bodies, such as residual antibiotics. The residual presence of antibiotics in aquatic environments indicates a relationship with the emergence of resistant bacteria, which are considered resistant when, in contact with these compounds, they resist and become tolerant to their effects, which can affect complex infections. This work aims to evaluate the environmental dynamics of a fluoroquinolone antibiotic in the water and sediment of the Billings Reservoir and its effect on the development of Escherichia coli, using microcosm experiments. In an exploratory visit to define the study area, four sampling stations were randomly selected in the Braço do Rio Grande. After analyzing surface water and applying descriptive statistics, EA02 presented the best water quality parameters in terms of T, pH, OD and COD, inferring that it is a more preserved and ideal station for the proposed experiment. The sediment-water interface microcosms will be disturbed with different analytical concentrations of the antibiotic to support the understanding of the pollutant attenuation processes in aquatic ecosystems by the mass balance between the liquid and solid phases, in addition to simulating the reservoir contamination conditions by characterization limnological. The collections of the systems will occur acutely (24 to 48 hours after exposure) and chronically (after 48 hours of exposure) and the antibiotic of interest, ciprofloxacin, will be determined by High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC-MS-MS). In the evaluation of E. coli, the samples will be incubated in qualitative and quantitative bacteriological kits, from which the development of the cultures will be analyzed through statistical evaluations such as linear regressions and tests of association between variables. In the end, it is expected to develop isolated strains of E. coli resistant to the fluoroquinolone with this characteristic due to residual exposure of antibiotics in the medium from which it was collected.