Effectiveness of boiling in eradication of common pathogens in water.

This Prospective analytic study was conducted at the microbiology laboratory of Dr. Ziauddin Hospital to find out minimum temperature and duration required to eradicate common bacterial pathogens from water samples. High concentration (> 1014 cfu/ml) of five common diarrheal pathogens were added to 100 ml water samples and heated till 40 degrees C, 60 degrees C, 100 degrees C, and two samples were further heated at 100 degrees C for 5 and 10 minutes respectively. Another set of samples were contaminated with stool specimen positive for diarrheal pathogens and heated in the similar fashion. Samples were inoculated on culture media to find out the growth of any organisms. All samples heated to 60 degrees C or beyond did not show any growth of bacteria on culture. So it is reliably proved that heating water up to 100 degrees C is sufficient to eradicate common disease causing bacteria even in stool contaminated samples and further heating would not be required.