It is widely believed that urban ecological landscape regards the city to be an ecosystem built by human activities and supported by natural and man-made functions and processes over time. In the past, human communities have selected their residing places and designed their cities by paying attention to natural environmental resources. The profound influence of technology and industry has broug...

The lack of potable water in arid countries leads to the use of treated sewage water (TSW) for crop growth. Mercury accumulation (up to 500 ng/g) in agricultural soil originating from daily irrigation with TSW was found at two sites fed separately from a hospital sewage plant and an industrial plant. A control site irrigated with potable water ([Hg] <0.01 ng/ml) had much reduced levels in soil ...

Fecal contamination of drinking water is a major health problem which accounts for many cases of diarrhea mainly in infants and foreigners. This contamination is a complex interaction of many parameters. Antibiotic resistance among bacterial isolates complicates the problem. The study was done to identify fecal contamination of drinking water by Diarrheagenic Antibiotic-Resistant Escherichia co...

The Umgeni Water Wiggins water treatment plant feeds the southern areas of Durban in South Africa and has a maximum treatment capacity of about 350 Ml/d. Two interconnected reservoirs at this facility hold treated water before it enters the distribution network. Because of the variable demand, the reservoir levels and residence times undergo considerable variation. This has a strong influence o...

Samples of drinking water from different sources in greater Cairo, Egypt, and bottled drinking water were tested for total coliform, fecal coliform, and coliphage populations. Of the 147 samples tested, 4 samples were positive for both total coliforms and coliphage, 65 samples were negative for total coliforms, fecal coliforms, and coliphage, and 78 samples were positive for coliphage and negat...

BACKGROUND Recurrent legionella outbreaks at one and the same location are common. We have identified a single Legionella pneumophila genotype associated with recurrent Legionella outbreaks over 6 years. METHODS Field emergency surveys following Legionella outbreaks were performed on a vessel in 2008, 2009 and 2013. Water samples from both the distribution and technical parts of the potable w...

One of the most widely used nanoparticles for water purification is activated carbon due to its large surface area and high adsorption capacity (Ortiz-Ibarra, et al., 2007). Activated carbon has proven to remove bacteria like Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli from fresh and potable water systems (Percival and Walker, 1999; Quinlivan, et al., 2005). Despite electrostatic repulsion betw...

BACKGROUND The environmental sources of sporadic, community-acquired legionnaires' disease are largely unknown, and culturing of water sources after identification of a case is currently not recommended. We conducted a prospective study of sporadic cases of community-acquired legionnaires' disease to determine whether the environmental reservoirs could be identified. METHODS We cultured sampl...