Curbing spread of waterborne diseases through new water monitoring method

An innovative way of identifying contaminated drinking water could reduce the spread of deadly diarrhoeal diseases by enabling communities to take action more quickly to limit exposure, a new study co-led by UCL academics has found. The paper, published in Water Research , shows how a technique exploiting the fluorescent properties of microbiological materials in water can instantly detect faecal contamination and is a more reliable indicator of the risk of impurities than previous testing methods. Researchers from UCL Geography, the British Geological Survey and Makerere University in Uganda  examined changes in water quality over a 14-month period from 40 sources supplied by groundwater in the rapidly expanding town of Lukaya in southern Uganda. Drinking water contaminated with human and animal faeces is consumed by at least two billion people worldwide. This pollution is responsible for outbreaks of waterborne diseases that remain common, even in high-income countries. Globally, diarrhoeal diseases attributed to faecally contaminated water supplies and unsafe sanitation account for more than 1.6 million deaths each year, with over a quarter of these in children aged under five. For decades, standard approaches to testing water supplies have used bacteriological indicators of faecal contamination, most commonly thermotolerant coliform bacteria known as TTCs.