Abstract
Total coliforms are a group of bacteria found in high numbers in  mammalian intestines; hence their presence in water indicates the possible contamination with faecal material. Total and faecal coliform counts were monitored over a period of 18 months using mFC, m-Endo and CM1046 media together with enzymatic assays on 215 environmental water samples obtained from the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. A positive correlation, with an R2 value of 0.9393 was observed between faecal and total coliform colony units employing mFc and m-Endo media, and 0.8818 using CM1046 media. Also,a positive correlation was observed between Escherichia coli colony-forming units and â-d-galactosidase (B-GAL) activity (R2=0.8542). Overall, this study indicated that faecal contamination of environmental water samples could be monitored by measuring total coliform â-galactosidase activity and total coliform colony-forming units.
Highlights
Coliforms are a group of bacteria employed to assess the microbiological quality of water and/or food
Analysing for total coliform bacteria and Escherichia coli is the most common method used to test the hygienic quality of drinking water (Huertas et al, 2003; Pitkänen et al, 2007)
We examine the relationship between faecal coliform (FC) and total coliform (TC), the potential of using TC β-d-galactosidase activity and colony-forming units (CFUs) counts as a measure of faecal coliform contamination of environmental water samples
Summary
Coliforms are a group of bacteria employed to assess the microbiological quality of water and/or food. The latter could be due to the fact that the currently accepted methods may lead to underestimations of waterborne coliforms (Hudson et al, 1983; McFeters et al, 1986), this does not rule out the unreliability of coliforms as faecal indicators Despite these setbacks, total coliforms are still being used in national and international guidelines for the microbiological quality assessment of water (Grabow et al, 1999; Noble et al, 2003; Horman et al, 2004; Byamukama et al, 2005). We examine the relationship between faecal coliform (FC) and total coliform (TC), the potential of using TC β-d-galactosidase activity and CFU counts as a measure of faecal coliform contamination of environmental water samples
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