E. Coli Kinetics - Effect of Temperature on the Maintenance and Respectively the Decay Phase

Abstract

The knowledge of enteric bacteria survival kinetic is very important for environmental scientists. Enteric bacteria andspecifically the fecal indicator bacteria are typically used to measure the sanitary quality of water for recreational, industrial, agricultural and water supply purposes. They are released into the environment with feces, and are then exposedto a variety of environmental conditions that eventually causetheir death. In general, it is believed that the fecal indicatorcannot grow in natural environments, since they are adapted to live in the gastrointestinal tract. Studies have shown that fecalindicator bacteria survive from a few hours up to several daysin surface water, but may survive for days or months in lake-sediments, where they may be protected from sunlight andpredators. We assume that pathogens similar to the fecal indicator bacteria die at the same rate as fecal indicator bacteria. Therefore, if we find relatively high numbers of fecalindicator bacteria in an environment, we assume that there is anincreased likelihood of pathogens being present as well. The kinetic of enteric bacteria survival in natural waters is affected by a large number of factors. One of them is the temperature. The aim of this contribution was the experimentalresearch of the survival kinetic of enteric bacteria applying a simple mathematical formula, which describes the survival kineticpredicting the decay phase at various temperatures. We aspire that the results will lead both to the solution of many engineering problems and to future research.