Water quality, reclamation and safety: advances in the detection and contamination source tracking of waterborne Cryptosporidium

Abstract

The global water shortage has pushed many countries and regions looking for alternative approaches to augment source water supply. Wastewater reclamation has been proven to be one of the practical options. Cryptosporidium remains at the forefront of studies on waterborne disease transmission and abatement.U. S. EPA Method 1622 is currently the state-of-art method for detecting Cryptosporidium oocysts in water. Although Method 1622 still has problems with specificity and sensitivity, it has significant improvement over previous testing methods. Consequently, it has been adopted as the standard by many countries. At the same time,molecular genotyping tools which could identify the species and genotypos of Cryptosporidium found in water were also developed to supplement the Method 1622 for contamination source tracking and understanding the public health importance of the Cryptosporidium found in water. The results thus far indicate that a proportion of Cryptosporidium in water are from species harmful to humans. Key words: Cryptosporidium ; Detection ; Water contamination ; Genotyping ; Water reclamation ;