More than 2,000 children die every day worldwide simply because of a lack of clean drinking water, according to the US Centers for Disease Control.
Engineers, including Tufts, have devised simple and inexpensive ways to purify drinking water in low-income countries using chlorine, but a common concern is that adding chlorine to water could harm beneficial bacteria in developing gut microbiomes. of children, who play. an important role in keeping health intact.
Now a team of scientists led by Tufts, the University of California at Berkeley, the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh and Eawag in Switzerland have found that the use of chlorine to treat drinking water in Dhaka, Bangladesh does not disrupt the normal bacterial population. children’s digestive tract, in addition to reducing diarrhea and the use of antibiotics.
The children’s microbiomes – tested from stool samples collected one year after the dispensers were installed – had a diversity and abundance of bacteria similar to that of children who did not receive chlorinated water. Some slight differences were observed, including the enrichment of beneficial insects and the increase in the presence of antibiotic resistance genes, but those changes were small and the overall composition of their microbiomes was similar.
While chlorine inactivates microorganisms in water during storage, transport, and delivery through the tap, this study suggests that it does not kill good bacteria after chlorinated water is consumed. In fact, by keeping bad insects out of the water source, chlorination allows children’s microbiomes to thrive and do their job well while maintaining their health.
This is very important, especially in the first years of life. The intestinal microbiome of infants is inoculated at birth, then grows and stabilizes to adulthood by about three years of age. Progressive colonization by various bacteria in the microbiome can be important for several stages of development related to metabolism and weight maintenance, the development of allergies, susceptibility to disease and even mental health.
“There is no doubt that further studies may be useful in understanding all the long-term health effects of chlorinated water consumption,” said Maya Nadimpalli, assistant professor of research in civil and environmental engineering at Tufts, “but this study clearly shows that the microbiome is protected. After at least a year of exposure, the benefits of water chlorination – which can save hundreds of thousands of lives each year – continue to outweigh its declining safety concerns. ”
Amy Pickering, a former Tufts and now Distinguished Chair at the Blum Center for Poverty and Global Practice at the University of California, Berkeley, has worked on the development and field testing of automated chlorination devices that are compatible with water infrastructure in Africa and Asia. .
“It is very encouraging that such a widely used, low-cost method of water treatment does not harm children’s developing microbiomes,” said Pickering, who led the original study and research team.
Nadimpalli, whose research is being conducted in collaboration with the Stuart B. Levy Center for Integrated Antimicrobial Resistance Management in Tufts, notes that because children in Bangladesh are frequently exposed to pathogens, they are also being treated with antibiotics in a rate five times higher than children. in the United States.
“The treatments themselves have a detrimental effect on the diversity of the gut microbiome and lead to worse health outcomes and potentially more antibiotic-resistant pathogens,” she said. “So chlorination can help reduce the incidence of disease, limit the use of antibiotics, and keep microbiomes healthy.”
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