RESEARCH ARTICLE


A Study on the Microbiological Status of Mineral Drinking Water



Faria Y. Aditi, Shafkat S. Rahman, Md. M. Hossain*
Department of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, BRAC University, Dhaka-1212, Bangladesh


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Creative Commons License
© 2017 Aditi et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at Department of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, BRAC University, 66, Mohakhali, Dhaka-1212, Bangladesh; Tel: +88-02-8824051; E-mail: mmhossain@bracu.ac.bd


Abstract

Introduction:

Water-borne diseases constitute a major health burden in Bangladesh. The objective of this study was to assess the overall quality of mineral water samples that obtained from different shops of Dhaka city.

Material and Methods:

To achieve the above-mentioned objective, methods of heterotrophic plate count (HPC) and total coliform count (TCC) were applied. Moreover, isolated colony from mineral water samples were characterized by using biochemical and antimicrobial susceptibility tests.

Results:

Different water samples showed different HPC ranged from 1.0×10 to 8.00×102. Antimicrobial sensitivity test of some selected bacteria viz S. intermedius, S. aureus, S. felis and S. Saccharolyticus were performed. It was observed that Staphylococcus spp. isolates were susceptible to erythromycin, tetracycline, norfloxacin and ciprofloxacin. Furthermore, a few Staphylococcus spp. isolates were intermediate resistant to penicillin and oxacillin. However, most of the Staphylococcus spp. isolates were resistant to cefixime.

Conclusion:

The results indicate that mineral water serves as a reservoir of various bacteria and that people in Dhaka city, who are the consumers of these water, might get diseases. This study emphasizes the need for elaborated microbiological examinations of mineral drinking water commonly used in Dhaka city.

Keywords: Mineral water, Staphylococcus, Pathogens, heterotrophic plate count (HPC).