Our society has become more aware of the abundance of bacteria which is evident by the increase in antimicrobial products over the past two decades. A commonly used agent in many antimicrobial products is silver ions due to its multifactorial approach to killing a wide range of microorganisms. Most of the research concerning silver ions has focused on its antimicrobial effectiveness and considerably less research has been done on any effect of the over-usage of silver in the environment. Thus, the goal of our study is to determine whether silver is affecting bacterial ecosystems within our local waterways. For the study, collections from surrounding streams were exposed to coupons either coated with silver zeolite or a non-silver coating. After 48 hours of exposure, the samples were transferred to a filter membrane through vacuum filtration and plated onto: tryptic soy agar (TSA), modified mTec agar (Mtec), an m-enterococcus agar (ME), and Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae agar (CRE). During 0, 24, and 48 hours of incubation, the concentration of silver was measured using an ICP-MS. The silver treatment showed an average silver concentration of 40 +/- 20 ppb was released after 48 hours. The culture-dependent bacterial results showed a decrease in growth with all samples treated with silver ions.
