Treated Wastewater Effluent as a Source of Microbial Pollution of Surface Water Resources

Shalinee Naidoo and Ademola O. Olaniran
Additional contact information
Shalinee Naidoo: Discipline of Microbiology, School of Life Sciences, College of Agriculture, Engineering and Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Private Bag X541 001, Westville Campus, Durban 4000, South Africa
Ademola O. Olaniran: Discipline of Microbiology, School of Life Sciences, College of Agriculture, Engineering and Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Private Bag X541 001, Westville Campus, Durban 4000, South Africa

IJERPH, 2013, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-22

Abstract: Since 1990, more than 1.8 billion people have gained access to potable water and improved sanitation worldwide. Whilst this represents a vital step towards improving global health and well-being, accelerated population growth coupled with rapid urbanization has further strained existing water supplies. Whilst South Africa aims at spending 0.5% of its GDP on improving sanitation, additional factors such as hydrological variability and growing agricultural needs have further increased dependence on this finite resource. Increasing pressure on existing wastewater treatment plants has led to the discharge of inadequately treated effluent, reinforcing the need to improve and adopt more stringent methods for monitoring discharged effluent and surrounding water sources. This review provides an overview of the relative efficiencies of the different steps involved in wastewater treatment as well as the commonly detected microbial indicators with their associated health implications. In addition, it highlights the need to enforce more stringent measures to ensure compliance of treated effluent quality to the existing guidelines.

Keywords: sanitation; treated wastewater; effluent disposal; microbial indicators; guidelines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/11/1/249/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/11/1/249/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:11:y:2013:i:1:p:249-270:d:31607

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().