Objectives: Surface waters and groundwaters are subject to microbial and chemical pollution. While the latter can cause chronic diseases, the former is considered acute as a small dose of pathogenic organisms can lead to an outbreak of waterborne diseases.

Micro-organisms are normally retained and adsorbed onto soil particles, thus, preventing groundwater contamination. However, under heavy rainfall or in a coarse-textured soil the pathogenic organisms may contaminate the groundwater sources.

The standard microbiological methods used to monitor water pollution can be unreliable. Chemical indicators have been tested in order to develop a routine robust and sensitive technique.

The presented work is a comparative study to determine the correlation between 1-aminopropan-2-one (APR), a component of sewage effluent and a biochemical sewage tracer, and biological indicators of faecal pollution.

Methods: Samples of untreated sewage effluent were incubated at constant temperature, with stirring, and aliquots of sample taken over a period of 5-6 days for determination of bacterial numbers and APR concentrations. Bacterial numbers were determined using the established membrane filtration technique, while APR concentrations were quantified by using a HPLC equipped with a UV detector.

Results and Discussion: Although the data set was small, linear regression analyses showed a high correlation between biological indicators and aminopropanone concentrations throughout the experiment in equivalent samples. The coefficient of variation was 87.5%, 81% and 80% for total coliforms, faecal coliforms and faecal streptococci, respectively.

This study indicates that the high concentration of aminopropanone in water can be considered as originating from faecal material. Further studies will indicate whether this correlation is also valid for groundwater samples.