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Reply With QuoteHey Drift Wood:
E. coli Bacteria is found in the gut of warm blooded animals. Geese, ducks, cows and even human waste can contaminate a water body with this bacteria. The bacteria itself normally is not pathogenic or harmful. But there is one species or genus of E.Coli that is very dangerous and can eat human flesh. That form of E. Coli has been found in raw hamburger meat. So cook your hamburger meat carefully to avoid this species of E. Coli as it's a real killer. It's rare thank god.
But the E. Coli bacteria that they test for is just an INDICATOR species for fecal matter in water. What it means is that when there is E. Coli present then there is some kind of Fresh Animal Waste Present and that waste can contain other Bacteria that can be Pathogenic. E Coli bacteria is sort of like the canary in the coal mine.
They need to track down the source of the E.coli in the water and clean it up. Water that is taken out of that lake should be chlorinated to kill any pathogenic bacteria before it's used for human consumption. They can use other methods to kill the bacteria such as Ozone gas or you can boil the water for a good 10minutes to kill any bacteria.
You can find E.coli bacteria in most lakes but not in great numbers.
This is one of the tests that I use to run at our lab and I got the lab certified with the State Board of Health in IN to perform drinking water sampling. Not just any commercial lab was allowed to perform those test. Most labs can test for E. Coli and get results back in 24 hours these days.
Hack Chemical Company makes a variety of test kits that are easy to use and are EPA certified.
E. Coli will show a green metalic sheen on the bacteria colonies when grown in a certain type of augar medium. I would have to look up the counts to determine the pollution quantification.
Standard Methods for the examination of water and waste water is the bible on the type of test. This book may be available at your local libraray and if not there it should be most large college libraries.
I had to look up the count number in my reference books. A count of 200 is about as high as can be counted on a culture media plate. Any higher than 200 is too numerous to count TNTC. It depends on how much sample was used to conduct the test. Now if they sampled 10,000 liters to get that number it would not be as bad as if they only sampled 001Liter and got the 200 count.
The number you need to know is the (Total) Coliform colonies/100ml.
As for eating fish out of that water, well I would not want to eat fish that comes out of a sewer. But since fish are not warm blooded they won't harbor the E Coli bacteria like a warm blooded animal would.
E. Coli and other bacteria found in the human gut is normal and actually benefits man. But the other bacteria that are found in conjunction with E Coli in the water can cause disease like Cholera and dysentary.
According to the Stand Methods the presense of any coliform bacteria renders the water POTENTIALLY unsatisfactory and unsafe.
As for what you can do. Well I would start a petition to the local goverment officials at the Township, or country level or town or city level to see if they can build sewers for the people that live around the lake. Either that or make them install workable septic tank systems.
A lot of the times you have homes built around a lake and back in the old days they would just run a pipe from the bathroom out to the lake.
With more and more homes being built this problem can only get worse if there is nothing done to control the sewage. It's very costly to build the required infrastracture to control sewage though. Which is why there are so many problems with this. The more humans we have the more needs to be controlled.
Originally Posted by Drift_Wood
