IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v17y2020i19p6999-d418956.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Impact of Freeze–Thaw Cycles on Die-Off of E. coli and Intestinal Enterococci in Deer and Dairy Faeces: Implications for Landscape Contamination of Watercourses

Author

Listed:
  • Emmanuel O. Afolabi

    (Biological & Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK)

  • Richard S. Quilliam

    (Biological & Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK)

  • David M. Oliver

    (Biological & Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK)

Abstract

Characterising faecal indicator organism (FIO) survival in the environment is important for informing land management and minimising public health risk to downstream water users. However, key gaps in knowledge include understanding how wildlife contribute to catchment-wide FIO sources and how FIO survival is affected by low environmental temperatures. The aim of this study was to quantify E. coli and intestinal enterococci die-off in dairy cow versus red deer faecal sources exposed to repeated freeze–thaw cycles under controlled laboratory conditions. Survival of FIOs in water exposed to freeze–thaw was also investigated to help interpret survival responses. Both E. coli and intestinal enterococci were capable of surviving sub-freezing conditions with the faeces from both animals able to sustain relatively high FIO concentrations, as indicated by modelling, and observations revealing persistence in excess of 11 days and in some cases confirmed beyond 22 days. Die-off responses of deer-derived FIOs in both faeces and water exposed to low temperatures provide much needed information to enable better accounting of the varied catchment sources of faecal pollution and results from this study help constrain the parameterisation of die-off coefficients to better inform more integrated modelling and decision-making for microbial water quality management.

Suggested Citation

  • Emmanuel O. Afolabi & Richard S. Quilliam & David M. Oliver, 2020. "Impact of Freeze–Thaw Cycles on Die-Off of E. coli and Intestinal Enterococci in Deer and Dairy Faeces: Implications for Landscape Contamination of Watercourses," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(19), pages 1-16, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:19:p:6999-:d:418956
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/19/6999/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/19/6999/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:19:p:6999-:d:418956. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.