Fungi in wastewaters: sanitary implications and potential bioremediation

Activated sludge is the core of wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). Bacteria and their role have been deeply studied in order to improve the biodegradation of recalcitrant compounds (Herreroa et al., 2015). On the contrary, fungi remain still largely unexplored. Nevertheless, the knowledge of mycoflora in biological wastewater treatment tanks could give information on the wastewater overall impact, which includes ecological and health aspects, and functional features of a WWTP (Awad et al., 2011). Actually, the biotransformation of recalcitrant substances seems related to synergic activities of bacteria and fungi (Spina et al., 2012). The present work is focused on the study of the mycoflora of 5 samples from oxidation tanks of 3 WWTP that treat tannery wastewaters (samples 1, 2, and 3), municipal wastewaters (sample 4), and landfill leachates (sample 5). The samples were inoculated on 3 different selective media and incubated at 2 temperatures to mimic the seasonal variations in the tanks. The main goals were the isolation of fungal strains for bioremediation applications and the evaluation of sanitary implications (presence of potentially human pathogens and toxigenics species).