Sea water microbiology

Projektinformationen

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: MAT1920025

Projekt abgeschlossen

Startdatum 1 Januar 1993

Enddatum 30 Juni 1995

Finanziert unter

• Specific research and technological development programme (EEC) in the field of measurements and testing, 1990-1994

Gesamtkosten Keine Daten

EU-Beitrag Keine Daten

Koordiniert durch

INSTITUT PASTEUR DE LILLE
France

Exploitable results

Sea water microbiology: testing bathing water

The Sea Water Microbiology project was a large-scale collaborative effort involving 34 laboratories from 12 Member States to evaluate the wide variety of techniques currently used to test the quality of bathing water and improve the accuracy, reliability and comparability of the data available to regulatory authorities and to the public. The conclusions provide a rigorous scientific basis for the standardization of testing methods. Its recommendations are likely to be adopted in full in the next European Directive on water quality, and will provide the framework for the progressive improvement of bathing water throughout the Union. The study generated three main sets of conclusions. First, it found that experienced microbiologists obtain equivalent results when using a common test method, and significantly different results when using their own methods. Some test methods in regular use, the three and five-tube Most Probable Number (MPN) tests, were imprecise and unreliable and should be abandoned altogether. They should be replaced by more recently developed Membrane Filtration (MF) or MPN 96-well techniques, which were found to give much better performance. There were a number of conclusions regarding which measurement parameters to use. Escherichia coli, for example was confirmed to be the only well-defined and easily measurable component of its group (the faecal coliform). Measurement of the larger but poorly defined faecal coliform and thermo-resistant coliform groups, therefore, should be discontinued. Third, a reference method should be developed to serve as a benchmark for the evaluation of existing and newly developed test methods. It should consist of two complementary techniques applied in parallel, in order to ensure complete accuracy. As a result of these results, there has been a steady improvement in the homogeneity of testing techniques, and therefore in the reliability of the published water quality maps.