Graveyards Can be a Reservoir for Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Graveyards can be a reservoir for antibiotic resistant bacteria:

[...]generally, cemeteries are places where corpses can decompose without posing a danger to public health. But sometimes-especially when sanitation and waste management services are poor-they can become environmental reservoirs of pollutants arising from human activities.

Among these pollutants are bacterial pathogens. These bacteria can be transported into groundwater when people live near a graveyard. The same communities-and visitors to a graveyard-can then be exposed to the pathogens via groundwater or surface water.

Decomposing bodies can add bacteria to the soil, but most importantly, they provide nutrients to the bacteria already present in the environment.

Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a microorganism that is commonly used to indicate the level of pollution in an environment, especially aquatic ones. This organism can be found in many places, including soil, water, food, and the intestines of humans and animals.

The presence of E. coli in the environment in large numbers can indicate faecal pollution. Some strains of this organism can also cause diseases such as diarrhoea, urinary tract infections and meningitis in newborn babies. The bacterium can also cause infection in other animals such as birds. Some strains have also been linked to disease outbreaks in developed and developing countries.

Many E. coli strains are resistant to antibiotics used to treat human diseases.

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