Introduction Water pollution in Dhaka city, Bangladesh has been a serious problem for years and increasing urbanisation is worsening the situation. Water supply in Dhaka mainly depends on the rivers Buriganga, Turag, Shitalakhya and Balu, which in recent years have been polluted to such an extent that it is getting very difficult to cope up with the increasing demand of usable water. The pollution is both biological and chemical, resulting from sewerage lines dumplings and toxic wastes originating from different types of industries 1 . In 2010, analysis of the heavy metal content of water in the Buriganga showed that concentrations of lead (Pb), Cadmium (Cd), Nickel (Ni), (Copper) Cu and Chromium (Cr) range from 58.17 to 72.45 μg/L, 7.08 to 12.33 μg/L, 7.15 to 10.32 μg/L, 107.38 to 201.29 μg/L and 489.27 to 645.26 μg/L, respectively 2 . For most of these heavy metals this concentration exceed the acceptable level set by the Environmental Quality Standards (1997), Department of Environment, Government of the Peoples’ Republic of Bangladesh 3 which is 50 μg/L for lead, 5 mg/L for cadmium, 1000 mg/L for copper, 100 μg/L for nickel and 50 mg/L for chromium and impose great risk to public health. Most of these heavy metals are toxic and carcinogenic for human and may lead to death in extreme cases. Among these, lead and hexavalent chromium are of particular concern due to their major impact on human and other forms of lives 4 . In children, exposure to high concentration of lead and chromium can cause potentially permanent learning and behavior disorders. These metals are also toxic for adults, having deleterious effects on heart, bones, intestines, kidneys, reproductive and nervous systems and leading to death in extreme cases 4 . Therefore, to ensure good public health, it is very important to remove these heavy metals from aquatic bodies in Bangladesh. There are limited strategies for removal of heavy metals from environment, most of which are physicochemical methods and possess several disadvantages, such as less affectivity, high costs, generation of toxic sludges as well as the problem of the safe disposal of the materials 5 . As an alternative to the physicochemical removal methods, use of microorganism to reduce, eliminate or detoxify heavy metals has achieved growing attention in recent years 5-9 . Additionally in several investigations, bacterial species have been isolated from several aquatic systems which were tolerant to different types of heavy metals and were also resistant to a variety of antibiotics, indicating to a strong correlation between metal resistance and antibiotic resistance among microbes 10-13 . In a number of studies aerobic, gram positive, endospore forming multi-drug resistant Bacillus spp has been found to be associated with the bioremediation of heavy metals 6,7,10,13-14 . It is possible that these bacteria utilize similar mechanisms to survive under metal and antibiotic stressed condition. Therefore, to understand the mechanism of heavy metal bioremediation by Bacillus spp, it is necessary to study the antibiotic resistance as well. This study therefore specifically focuses to isolate Bacillus spp with tolerance to increased concentration of lead and chromium from polluted water of the rivers Buriganga and Shitalkhya aiming to find out a solution to remove these pollutants from the river water. Materials and Methods Sampling sites The aim of this study is to isolate Bacillus spp with bioremediation capacity of heavy metals lead and Chromium. Therefore, aquatic environments heavily contaminated with industrial pollutant, especially pollutant from textile and tannery that would be enriched Original Article Bangladesh J Microbiol, Volume 30, Number 1&2, June-December 2013, pp 17-22 Heavy Metal Tolerance and Antibiotic Resistance of Bacillus spp. Isolated from Two Major Rivers in Bangladesh Tahmina Shammi 1 and Sangita Ahmed 1 * 1 Department of Microbiology, University of Dhaka, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh Pollution of the environment with toxic heavy metals is spreading throughout the world along with industrial progress. Removal of these toxic heavy metals by using bacteria has achieved growing attention in recent years. The present study focuses on isolation of lead and chromium tolerant Bacillus spp., from the Buriganga and the Shitalkhya, the two major rivers surrounding Dhaka. A total of 25 Bacillus spp. isolates tolerant to 50 ppm lead and chromium were preliminarily identified based on morphological and biochemical analysis. Further investigation revealed that all isolates were also able to grow at 1000 ppm lead and 400 ppm chromium, while tolerance to 1500 ppm lead and 500 ppm chromium was observed among 48% and 76% isolates, respectively. All isolates were also able to grow at 50 ppm copper and 50 ppm zinc, while 72% grew at 100 ppm copper. The heavy metal tolerant Bacillus spp were also multi drug resistant and showed resistance to Tetracycline (100%), Ceftazidime (100%), Ceftriaxone (100%), Ampicillin (28%) and Nalidixic acid (24%). Key words: Bacillus, heavy metal, antibiotic .