Water pollution is the contamination of water bodies, usually due to anthropogenic activities, which introduce contaminants into the water. These contaminants, such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, endocrine disruptors and pathogens, are controlled from entering the environment and removed from drinking water in water treatment plants.

The toxic and antimicrobial compounds have been lately studied to impose selection pressure on microbes to attain resistance against antimicrobials. This phenomenon is called antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Thus, AMR risk is a product of pollutant discharges and can jeopardize human, animal and environmental health. Conventional water treatment technologies were not primarily designed to target microbial sources of AMR.

Therefore, One Health approach must be taken to identify, assess, and prevent the environmental spread of AMR contaminants. Challenges stemming from the prevalence and evolution of AMR require innovative and interdisciplinary research to determine the emergence and effect of contaminants in the environment to intervene in solutions to develop sustainable and advanced water treatment.

Environmental surveillance will identify the critical AMR source points and the impact of contamination of antimicrobials and other toxic compounds in the selection of AMR. The interdisciplinary research approach, including compounds and metals estimation, Next-generation sequencing (NGS), environmental informatics and biostatistics, will provide insights into ecological contamination in the selection of AMR. This knowledge will be further translated into developing effective and sustainable water treatment to degrade AMR contaminants and other antimicrobials.