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Environmental health
Published in Jan de Boer, Marcel Dubouloz, Handbook of Disaster Medicine, 2020
Regarding quality: potable water is water which contains no elements posing a danger for human consumption or for any domestic use, including personal hygiene. Such elements may be microbiological, chemical, or physical. Water may be contaminated by micro-organisms, usually of faecal origin. The presence of faecal coliforms indicates that the water has been contaminated by faeces of human or other warm-blooded animals. Concentrations are usually expressed per 100 ml of water. As a rough guide, 0–10 faecal coliforms/100 ml = reasonable quality; 10–100 faecal coliforms/100 ml = polluted, more than 100 faecal coliforms = dangerous. The presence of toxic substances (arsenic, nitrates, etc.) or abnormally high levels of trace elements (such as fluoride) in water poses a risk to the health. Physical quality concerns the physical attribute of the water, namely: taste, smell, and appearance.
Water quality and standards
Published in Sandy Cairncross, Richard Feachem, Environmental Health Engineering in the Tropics, 2018
Sandy Cairncross, Richard Feachem
By convention, the most commonly used indicator bacteria are the coliforms. Water is tested either for the presence of the total coliform group or for the presence of thermotolerant (previously known as ‘faecal’) coliforms only. Thermotolerant coliforms, mainly comprising Escherichia coli, are a subgroup of the total coliform group and they occur entirely, or almost entirely, in faeces. By contrast, other members of the coliform group can be free-living in nature and therefore their presence in water is not necessarily evidence of faecal contamination. Escherichia coli are always present in faeces; most are not pathogenic, although some strains are a major cause of childhood diarrhoea throughout the world.
Published in Ronald M. Atlas, James W. Snyder, Handbook Of Media for Clinical Microbiology, 2006
Ronald M. Atlas, James W. Snyder
Use: For the detection of fecal coliforms by a most-probable-number (MPN) method. Multiple dilutions of samples (3, 5, or 10 replicates per dilution) are added to tubes containing A 1 broth. After incubation, test tubes with gas accumulation in the Durham tubes are scored positive and those with no gas as negative. An MPN table is consulted to determine the most probable number of fecal coliforms.
Multiple coinfections and Guillain Barré syndrome following outdoor travel to the American Northeast
Published in Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 2023
William Farrington, Farzam Farahani, Kevin Garrett Tayon, Jaclyn Rudzinski, Mark Feldman, Kartavya Sharma
A 66-year-old man presented with 3 weeks of daily, loose, nonbloody stools, 2 weeks of daily fever and night sweats, and 2 days of rapidly ascending numbness and weakness. His stool consistency improved 4 days prior to admission and was never associated with nausea, vomiting, or abdominal bloating or pain. Symptoms began about 1 month after returning from a 4-month long trip to the Catskill Mountains of New York and northwestern Connecticut, living in a house in each location. He frequently hiked and drank tap water but did not swim in or drink from any outdoor bodies of fresh water. He did not notice any tick or flea bites or contact with wildlife but did report that his two dogs were found to have fleas. In Connecticut, where the patient was renovating the house, he frequently worked outside on landscape. Drinking water at this location was subsequently found to contain high levels of uranium and fecal coliform bacteria. Two days prior to admission, the patient received one dose of ceftriaxone 1 g.
Historical analysis of inverse correlation between soil-transmitted helminthiasis and pancreatic cancer
Published in Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 2021
Studies published in 1982 found that hookworm (19.6%), T. trichiura (55.2%), A. lumbricoides (49.4%), and S. stercoralis (3.8%) affected significant percentages of the Appalachian population. However, data on STH infection rates in the Appalachian region since the 1980s are lacking.31 Despite the dearth of direct knowledge on current STH levels, the state of sanitation in much of Appalachia predicts that helminth infections remain endemic. 1990s data showed that many Appalachian households were not connected to a public clean running water system or public sewer system. Access to public water systems or sewage removal was lowest (<33%) in counties in the Blue Ridge Mountains area of Appalachia (which includes parts of the states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia).48 In 2000, it was estimated that 169,000 housing units in Appalachia still lacked indoor plumbing, with some counties having incomplete plumbing in 25% of the housing units.32 There are recent reports of raw sewage flowing through residential yards in West Virginia due to wastewater infrastructure deficits.49 Within the past few years, water samples collected from 15 of 16 sources used for drinking water and recreational purposes in rural Kentucky “contained fecal coliforms, Escherichia coli, or both.”50 When the PC mortality rate is mapped by county across the USA, a stretch of counties with lower rates is found along the Blue Ridge Mountains.42
Spatial distribution, multivariate statistical analysis, and health risk assessment of some parameters controlling drinking water quality at selected primary schools located in the southwestern coastal region of Bangladesh
Published in Toxin Reviews, 2022
Tapos Kormoker, Abubakr M. Idris, Mohammed Mahmud Khan, Tanmoy Roy Tusher, Ram Proshad, Md. Saiful Islam, Sujan Khadka, Shaira Rahman, Md. Humayun Kabir, Satyajit Kundu
Fecal coliform (FC) and total coliform (TC) bacteria were examined using the membrane filtration method (APHA 2012). Briefly, 100 ml of each water sample were filtered through a membrane filter paper (0.45 μm pore size) and placed on mFC and mEndo agar plates. Afterwards, the plates were incubated at 45 °C and 37 °C for FC and TC, respectively, for 21 ± 3 h under aerobic condition (Rahman et al.2015a). Finally, the observations were carried out for the appearance of blue and golden red colonies on mFC and mENDO agar plates, which were later purified and used for bacteriological analysis by determining the colony forming unit (CFU). Both the positive and negative controls were used to standardize the test.