Monitoring of Fecal Pollution in Fresh Water and Soil of Abbis Area, East of Alexandria, Egypt

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, Microbiology Laboratory, Alexandria, Egypt

2 Department of Environmental Studies, Institute of Graduate Studies and Research, Alexandria University, Egypt

Abstract

Great concern is currently assigned to monitor the environmental conditions at Abbis and its satellite villages, east of Alexandria City, Egypt that suffer severe fecal pollution arising from the lack of sanitary sewerage system. The main objective of the present study was to evaluate the bacteriological quality of water and soil at Abbis area (Villages no. 7 and 8) and some physicochemical characteristics of the water bodies. Results revealed that pH, salinity, dissolved oxygen, biodegradable organic matter and chemical oxygen demand exceeded their permissible limits. The total viable bacterial count ranged between 1.0 x104 and 6.2 x105 CFU/ml in water samples and from 7.1x106 to 8.0 x109 CFU/g in soil samples.  Total coliforms in the water of the less polluted sites recorded <300 cell/100 ml and in the highly polluted sites recorded >1800 cell/100 ml. However, all soil samples were heavily contaminated with total coliforms (>1800 cell/100 g).  Fecal coliforms in the water samples ranged from 5 to 350 cell/100 ml.  For soil, half of soil samples showed very high density of fecal coliforms (>1800 cell/100 g) and the rest showed fecal coliforms in the range of 35-1600 cell/100 g. Some correlations were detected among the tested water parameters at the study area and most of the sampling sites were similar.According to the European and Egyptian current standards, the bacteriological analyses confirmed the results of the physicochemical characterization where most of the selected sites were highly polluted.

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