Bacterial diseases, world incidence

The roots of environmental microbiology also lie in urban waste management and treatment. The field originally focused on monitoring the movement of pathogens and treating them within natural and urban environments to protect municipal water quality and public health. As the world became more urbanized in the late nineteenth century, the incidence of communicable diseases such as typhoid fever and cholera increased. To combat the spread of diseases, cities and communities began to treat water with various filtration and disinfectant methods. For the most part, such approaches to water treatment were instrumental in the elimination of waterborne bacterial diseases in developed countries, and disinfection processes continue to be widely used. 

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