Pathogens In Environmental Research

There are many types of bacteria that can be found in your bathroom. They might also be found on your toothbrush! I have been researching about what bacteria are lurking in my bathroom. I placed 6 petri dishes filled with agar in my bathroom. I left them there for 24 hours to collect bacteria samples.

The presence and variety of microorganisms in water accounts for most of the indicators of water quality. The presence of Coliform is a big indicator of fecal contamination in freshwater sources. Coliform bacteria is an organism that is naturally present in the human digestive tract; these tend to be rare and

Today in medicine doctors are rapidly isolating and distinguishing the many pathogenic microbes encountered daily within the environment. Public health has been affected from the faster identification of microorganisms by delivering an accurate analysis to patients in order to receive treatment of the disease in a timely manner. Due to the growing understanding of these organisms more have been easier to indicate to improve water quality. Also more methods have been developed for better treatment options from fecal bacteria in public water systems. Scientist has developed such specific methods of identifying the unknown organism to tell if the contamination has come from either a human, bird, or mammal. (Achtman et al., 2008)

What naïve people cease to comprehend is that manure can also have serious consequences for humans that come into contact with contaminated water. Manure contains a wide array of pathogens from E.coli to Campylobacter that causes very serious harm, if not be fatal in certain cases. When manure is washed off a farm by rain into a body of water, the bacteria stay with it, and the more runoff that is flowing into a single lake or river, the stronger and more dangerous these bacteria can be. If the concentration reaches a high enough level, the bacteria can be unsafe for people to swim in the water or merely come in contact with the water, because they can be given the disease. Before anyone decides that these bacteria are no big deal and chose to go swimming anyway, they must realize that the symptoms of E.coli include, severe abdominal cramping as well as bloody diarrhea for a duration between 7-14 days. In severe cases, E.coli can be lethal and is responsible for almost 100 deaths annually in the United States alone. In Lake Winnebago, a warning sign is posted whenever there is greater than 235 colonies of E.coli in a sample of

Scientists have studied the impact of water borne pathogens over time. Just how dependent human life is on the waterways is one such question which arises. The study involves the effect of such pathogens on human life. This study was narrowed down to the area of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay each weekend is occupied for recreational use. Such activities as swimming, fishing, and body surfing are common place. Normally each year thousands of pounds of seafood are distributed from out of the bay. There is a vast amount of people who come to visit the area each year.

The Duck Creek watershed in Scott County, IA is currently facing high levels of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria contamination. This pollution has put the watershed on the impaired waters list for the state of Iowa. The impaired waters list is a comprehensive list of every waterway in a state that has a contamination problem according to EPA regulations (insert source for impaired waters explanation & EPA regulations). Much of the pollution that can be found in the Duck Creek watershed is coming from nonpoint source (NPS) pollution. Nonpoint source pollution significantly contributes to the deterioration of water quality due to the difficulty in identifying, assessing and controlling the sources of this type of pollution (citation Wang). This pollution is caused by runoff moving over the land. It picks up and carries away natural and human-made pollutants, finally depositing them into lakes, streams, rivers, wetlands and even our underground sources of drinking water (citation SCSWCD). Examples of nonpoint sources in the watershed could include failing septic systems, livestock access to streams, pastures full of manure, fertilizers applied to crops, miscellaneous urban sources such as gasoline or oil, pet waste, and wildlife (citation SCSWCD). Another source of NPS pollution is that conventional urban storm

macroparasites. These also vary in size and shape, and also in the type of diseases they cause in

Casualties in the Northern California bacteria outbreak are five ill and twenty-nine dead. More are becoming ill by the second. This bacteria, termed Cerequaestionium, affects the brain’s frontal lobe. Doctors reported that within hours, memory and judgment loss set in. People also lose the ability to think and make rational decisions. Three murders have occurred in relation to the disease. Many more suicides and cases of brain failure are being reported. Three are on suicide watch with two more diagnosed this afternoon.

The contamination was ultimately found to be Escherichia coli 0157:H7 commonly referred to as E. coli or EC0157. Investigations by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Missouri state and county public health departments determined the most probable source of contamination was leakage of sewage near broken water main lines that then entered the drinking water distribution system (Swerdlow et al, 1992). According to the report by Swerdlow et al (1992), this particular incident had the distinction of being not only the largest incidence of EC0157 infection at that time but also “the first due to a multiple resistant organism, and the first documented to be transmitted by water” (Swerdlow et al, 1992, p. 818). Testing of water taken directly from the wells in Cabool revealed the water contamination did not occur in the ground water itself but was initiated in and then distributed via the water supply system.

RESULTS: Our main goal was to identify which lakes and ponds tested positive for Coliform or Escherichia coli and to come up with some reasoning as to why this could have happened. Water sampled from 6 different locations: Sebago Lake, Hinckley Reserve, Clarks Pond, a small pond near the turf field at the University of Southern Maine, in Gorham, Maine, and two runoff snowbanks both located on the USM campus in Gotham were all surveyed. These samples were taken into the lab, mixed with a COLISURE packet and pipetted into a well plate. They were then incubated for at least 24 hours at 37˚C to see if they would yield positive or negative results. The COLISURE kit perviously mentioned tests for two things: first for Coliform in the sample

In comparison to the States Standards in table 10, Fecal Coliform for sites 7, 8, 9, 12, 17, and 18, all in the urbanize Buffalo Creek watershed have mean values of 1613.95, 1189.52, 2447.38, 3167.71, 1410.86, 1178.30 CFU/100ml respectively which are within the states watch zone for the 1999 to 2002 parameters. Subsequently, above normal levels were recorded for Buffalo Creek Watershed sites 9, 12, 15, 18 for 2003 to 2008, sites 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 for 2009 to 2010, and sites 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 for 2011 to 2013with fecal coliform concentrations of 1459.56, 1078.11,1340.28,1113.34; 1890.46, 1517.04, 4115.75, 1863.17, 1475.29, 2078.82, 2165.17, 1314.42, 1389.96, 4427.21, 4684.38, 2026.25; and 1172.76, 1928.00, 2507.14,

Microorganisms have been used by human beings to their benefit for centuries. Ancient biotechnology utilized yeast to make bread and wine – perhaps well before they even knew that tiny microbes were causing bread to rise, or grapes to ferment! In the modern day, the use of microbes has extended so far as to actually help us reverse the damages we cause to the environment. One such environmental application of microorganisms is Bioremediation – the use of either indigenous or Hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria (HCBs) to rapidly digest hydrocarbons from oil spills.

Foodborne illnesses is an important problem in the United States, which cause a total of 19,056 infections, 4,200 hospitalizations, and 80 deaths were reported in 2013. Moreover, foodborne illnesses cost the United States an estimated $152 billion per year in healthcare (Scharff, 2010; CDC, 2014). E. coli O157 belonged Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC), it was usually classified pathotypically as enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) (Bryan et al., 2015). Between 2000 and 2010 have 5688 cases of O157 STEC infections were reported by FoodNet sentinel states, while the rate of O157 STEC infection decreased from 2.17 to 0.95 per 100,000 (Gould et al., 2013). By the way, Magwedere et al. (2013) also reported retail ground meat samples were purchased at grocery stores, local farmers’ markets, and online vendors, out of 16 ground chicken samples, 7 samples tested positive for O157 STEC. On the other hand, E. coli also causes diverse extraintestinal infections by uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC), urinary tract infections (UTI) is a good example to illustrate. The economic burden associated with urinary tract infections is estimated to be approximately 1.5 billion in the United States annually. According to previous studies, the food animal and meat reservoir might exist and isolate from retail chicken meat products for UPEC (Jakobsen et al., 2010; Shortlidge et al., 2013; Natalie et al., 2015). In recent research suggested UPEC besides the ability to

The concern is focused on the risks associated with its recreational purposes and risks associated with waste water and the spread of zoonotic diseases. (Phelps et al. 2014;Yamamoto et al. 2010.). For example, there has being avian flu outbreaks that were associated with nearby waterfowl habitats contaminating the water with faeces. (Halvorson et al. 1989; Karunakaran et al. 1983). Furthermore outbreaks of avian flu in reservoirs have been seen to spread through open water from fields spreading into nearby water sources. (Hinshaw et al. 1979; Markwell and shortridge 1982) Also it has been considered a risk from carcasses of dead birds spreading the virus in the water sources, however it has been considered to be unlikely that there will be a spread of H5N1 through this route. (Stallknecht et al. 2006) In order to detect risks such as this real-time PCR is used to detect the levels of the virus in water. (Yamamoto et al. 2010) From detection of the virus risk management becomes another essential factor in mitigating the spread of contaminated recreational water. )

Ten pathogens of interest that are commonly causative agent in drinking water disease were identified to be included in the cost-benefit analysis: Campylobacter sp., Salmonella sp., E. coli O157:H7, Adenovirus, Rotavirus, Hepatitis A, Cryptosporidium sp., Giardia sp., Norovirus, and Legionella. Infection rates, incident cases, acute gastrointestinal (AGI) cost per case, sequelae rates and cost per case, and mortality rates and cost per case were identified for each of the ten identified pathogens. When data was unavailable, an estimate was made based on relevant data identified in the literature. Those values were then used to calculate the annual costs associated with AGI illness cases and the number of cases and total annual costs