This study presents first-hand evidence of public health risk through systematic wastewater surveillance in a region of Northeast India, adopting an integrated One Health framework that combines geochemical, microbial, and exposome analyses. Twenty-five water samples were collected from hospital areas, residential areas, and rivers, representing varied anthropogenic influences. Geochemical profiling using water analyzers and atomic absorption spectroscopy revealed elevated lead (0.9 mg/L) and selenium (0.45 mg/L) in residential areas, higher total dissolved solids in hospital effluents (340 mg/L), and increased turbidity with suspended solids (410 mg/L) in river samples. Metagenomic sequencing with KEGG-based annotation identified dominant taxa across sites, including Limnohabitans (12.4%) in rivers, Polynucleobacter (10.8%) in hospitals, and Acinetobacter (9.5%) in residential areas. Exposome profiling via LC-ESI-QTOF-MS detected 490 compounds, including 30 carcinogens, with significant pollutant–microbe correlations (e.g., Flavobacterium, r = 0.71, p < 0.05). Residential areas showed the highest abundance of antibiotic resistance genes (147), alongside elevated concentrations of toxic elements, particularly Se and Pb. The presence of potentially carcinogenic compounds and the co-occurrence of chemical and biological hazards in untreated surface water of even less anthropogenically impacted regions like Northeast India highlight the urgent need for One Health-based wastewater surveillance.
Gogoi et al. (Mon,) studied this question.