Evaluation of Factors Influencing the Environmental Spread of Pathogens by Wastewater Treatment Plants
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Evaluation of Factors Influencing the Environmental Spread of Pathogens by Wastewater Treatment Plants Pallavi Bhatt & Nupur Mathur & Anuradha Singh & Hemant Pareek & Pradeep Bhatnagar
Received: 17 December 2019 / Accepted: 5 August 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), usually designed to remove organic pollutants and nutrients, are often poorly equipped to handle pathogens. The present study investigated the multiple barriers provided by WWTPs to understand their role in spreading pathogenic bacteria into the environment. Three types of WWTPs (hospital, domestic, and mixed) differing in the source of raw influent, operating parameters, and reactor configuration (biological and tertiary treatment processes) were compared for the presence of fecal indicators and pathogenic bacteria discharged in their treated effluents. The plate-count technique was used for bacterial enumeration on selective agar. The microbial quality of the treated effluent was observed to P. Bhatt (*) : N. Mathur : A. Singh Environmental, Molecular, Microbiology (EMM) Laboratory, Department of Zoology, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, Rajasthan 302004, India e-mail: [email protected]
N. Mathur e-mail: [email protected] A. Singh e-mail: [email protected]
be strongly influenced by characteristics inherent to a WWTP rather than depending on the characteristics of the raw influent. Among the different configurations studied, membrane bioreactor (MBR) treatment followed by chlorine disinfection provided an effluent of the highest quality (100% bacterial removal rates) followed by moving bed bioreactor (MBBR) combined with UV disinfection. MBR treatment greatly increased the efficiency of chlorine disinfection. Higher total suspended solids (TSS) removal corresponded to higher bacterial removal rates. Tertiary treatment proved to be an important determinant of the microbial quality of the final effluent. A great heterogeneity was observed in the removal rates of different bacterial groups with different treatment processes. The highest removal was observed in the case of indicators and least in the case of emerging pathogens like Escherichia coliO157: H7 indicating a lack of correlation between traditional indicators and emerging pathogens and also the inefficiency of the current wastewater treatment technologies in dealing with emerging pathogens. Keywords Pathogens . Fecal indicators . Biological treatment . Tertiary treatment . Hydraulic residence time . Total suspended solids
H. Pareek Commissionerate College Education, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India e-mail: [email protected]
1 Introduction
P. Bhatnagar Faculty of Science, IIS University, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India e-mail: [email protected]
Waterborne diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. It is estimated that more than 2.2 million deaths occur per year globally due to waterborne
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diseases, out of which approximately 1.4 million death cases are reported in the case of c
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