Drinking Water Quality and the Geospatial Distribution of Notified Gastro-Intestinal Infections

GRILC, Eva; GALE, Ivanka; VERŠIC, Aleš; ŽAGAR, Tina; SOCAN, Maja

The last limitation of the study remains the universal, global use of bacterial indicators of fecal contamination of water. Good environmental survival of important waterborne viruses and protozoa raised serious questions about the suitability of the reliance on relatively shortlived coliforms as indicators of the microbiological quality of water. That is, while the presence of coliforms could still be taken as a sign of fecal contamination, the absence of coliforms could no longer be taken as a guarantee that water was uncontaminated. Thus, existing bacterial indicators and indicator approaches do not, in all circumstances, identify all potential waterborne pathogens; their presence in water is also "underreported". Indeed, no single indicator organism, or a small set of indicators, can successfully identify or predict the presence, let alone the source, of all classes of potential pathogens -especially emerging microorganisms (20) .