It turns out that bacteria contaminating the drinking water on the International Space Station aren't any more dangerous than bacteria here on Earth.
Bacteria have flourished in space, growing in the potable water dispenser on the space station. But the two species of bacteria thriving in this dispenser aren't any more harmful than closely related microbes here on Earth, a new study has found.
In 2009, NASA installed the water dispenser on the space station, but soon after, samples taken from the device showed that bacteria had taken up residence in the water. The two strains of bacteria — Burkholderia cepacia and Burkholderia contaminans — contaminated not only the dispenser, but the drinking water itself.
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These space microbes are part of a group of related Burkholderia bacteria species which, on Earth, have caused lung infections and have been particularly difficult to kill using traditional techniques. While astronauts on the space station have regularly flushed the dispenser with an extra-strength cleaning solution, bacteria have remained on the device, according to a statement.
Researchers in this new study, who sequenced the genomes of bacterial strains collected from the dispenser from 2010 to 2014, found that all of the B. cepacia and B. contaminans bacterial strains were very similar and most likely came from bacteria that were on the device before it launched to space.
In the study, the researchers found that the bacteria living on the space station were no more dangerous than similar microbes on Earth, and if an astronaut were to get a bacterial infection from these microbes on the dispenser, it would be treatable with antibiotics, according to the statement.
"Based on the information presented here, it seems likely that the two populations of Burkholderia present in the ISS PWS are not more virulent than those that might be encountered on planet," the researchers said in the study.
The work was detailed in a study published Feb. 19 in the journal PLOS ONE.
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