Distribution of antibiotic resistance genes and bacteria from six atmospheric environments: Exposure risk to human

Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), as an emerging environmental pollutant, have received widespread attention. There are many studies on ARGs in water and soil. However, there are few studies on airborne ARGs. We used qPCR to detect 19 ARG subtypes in six atmospheric environments. Among the different atmospheric environments including wastewater treatment plant (fine screens and sludge thickener), bathroom, laboratory, hospital and outdoor, the highest total concentration of ARGs is detected in the haze outdoor (9 × 10⁵ copies/m³), while the lowest is in the bathroom atmosphere (4.2 × 10⁴ copies/m³). Furthermore, β-lactam ARGs are found to be the dominant ARGs in these 6 atmospheric environments. Due to the large number and widespread use of antibiotics, the airborne ARGs in hospital have the highest diversity and equitability. The β-lactam ARGs are significantly positively correlated with sulfonamides ARGs, indicating the mechanism of co-resistance since these two ARGs may be on the same genetic elements and thus simultaneously exhibit both resistances. The network analysis provides potential host information between the airborne ARGs and the coexisted microbial taxa. Sphingomonas and Bradyhizoblum strains presumably host for tetracycline and β-lactam ARGs, respectively. The ADD_outdoor of bla_TEM-1 was 7.8 × 10⁵ copies/d/kg, more than the ADD (7.6 × 10³ copies/d/kg) of bla_TEM-1 by drinking water. We can't ignore ARGs in the atmospheric environments.