Comparative Assessment of Bacteriological Quality of Drinking Water using Membrane Filtration and Multiple Tube Fermentation Methods

O.O Adebisi,A.A Adetomiwa,I.D Gbala

doi:10.4314/jasem.v24i5.19

Abstract

Comparative assessment of 13 different drinking water sources (sachet, bottled, pipe borne and borehole) was carried using the conventional direct coliform plate count (CPC), multiple tube fermentation (MTF) and membrane filtration (MF) techniques. Physicochemical analyses indicated that the water samples meet WHO guidelines for pH, temperature and turbidity. However, the bacteriological analyses showed that none of the drinkingwater source is potable according to WHO guidelines. The confirmatory and completed tests revealed the presence of faecal coliforms in some of the samples. Findings of this study demonstrate that CPC is a poor method to assess water potability while MTF and MF techniques compared relatively well. There is need to intensify effort at the monitoring of activities in the rapidly expanding packaged water industry with a view to improving the standards. Keywords: drinking water, membrane filtration, multiple tube fermentation, coliform

Highlights

Diseases contracted from consumption of contaminated drinking water constitute a major burden on human health
The enumeration of total coliform bacteria by multiple tube fermentation (MTF) and membrane filtration (MF) techniques has been used by microbiologists for many years to assess the bacteriological quality of drinking water
This work was an attempt not just to investigate the bacteriological quality of drinking water sources available to residents in the University of Ilorin campus, and to comparatively assess the sensitivity of the two techniques (MTF and MF) in enumeration of total coliform and detection of faecal coliform

Summary

Introduction

Diseases contracted from consumption of contaminated drinking water constitute a major burden on human health. The most common and widespread health risk associated with drinking water is microbial contamination. Total and faecal coliform have been used extensively for many years as indicators for determining the sanitary quality of water sources (Hervert et al, 2017). The enumeration of total coliform bacteria by multiple tube fermentation (MTF) and membrane filtration (MF) techniques has been used by microbiologists for many years to assess the bacteriological quality of drinking water. This work was an attempt not just to investigate the bacteriological quality of drinking water sources available to residents in the University of Ilorin campus, and to comparatively assess the sensitivity of the two techniques (MTF and MF) in enumeration of total coliform and detection of faecal coliform

Methods

Results

Conclusion