Full Description

Simple, rapid and reliable fecal indicator tests are needed to better monitor andmanage the fecal impacts and sanitary quality of waters with human uses. Thenew US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Ground Water Rule uses coliphages and other fecal indicators (E.coli, enterococci) to monitor the quality of groundwater used in public watersystems. This study addressed needs of the Ground Water Rule by creating arapid and simple 3-hour microbial water quality monitoring system for F+coliphages as fecal indicators. Water samples are processed by a 3-hour F+ coliphage cultureenrichment which is a modified version of USEPA method 1601 for groundwater. The research hypothesis was that modifying USEPA method 1601 byincreasing initial E. coli levels in enrichments would decrease the total coliphageculture time from 16-24 hours to 60-360 minutes. This development and evaluation of a rapid F+ coliphage culture enrichment andnovel immunological agglutination test provides a new tool for same-daymonitoring and decisions on the microbiological quality of water. This work alsoimproves access to F+ coliphage detection and source tracking by making itsimpler, as affordable as bacteriological analysis, rapid, and potentially field-portable.This new coliphage method can be applied to monitor groundwaterquality under the USEPA Ground Water Rule, which affects about 150,000public water systems that use groundwater and other mixed groundwater/surfacewater systems. Includes 15 references.

Product Details

Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 11/01/2007 Number of Pages: 5File Size: 1 file , 74 KB