Water pollutants pathogenic microorganisms

One of the potentially major applications of a DNA electrochemical biosensor is the testing of water, food, soil, and plant samples for the presence of pathogenic microorganisms and analytes (carcinogens, drugs, mutagenic pollutants, etc.) with binding affinities for DNA. 

A practical and very useful application of DNA analysis is in detecting coliform bacteria in water supplies. The same techniques can be extended to check for pollution of surface water and beaches by sewage. The importance of this is can easily be understood by looking at the range of pathogenic microorganisms which can be found in fecal material and can from time to time appear in areas... 

In regard to water pollution, reports pointed out that water pollutants have the ability to harm aquatic life, threaten human health, or result in the loss of recreational or aesthetic potential. Surface water pollutants come from industrial sources, nonpoint sources, municipal sources, background sources, and other/ unknown sources. Out of the eight chief water pollutants—biochemical oxygen demand, nutrients, suspended solids, pH, oil and grease, pathogenic microorganisms, toxic pollutants, and nontoxic pollutants—all, in one way or another, are linked to chemistry and the chemical industry. 

Not all bacteria are pathogenic or harmful to humans. Some microorganisms are harmless or even some are very useful for human beings. An example is the lactobacilli in human stomach that helps in converting lactose and other sugars to lactic acid. However, these bacteria will cause disease if they are detected in environments that are not their normal habitat. Thus, the presence of certain bacteria out of their normal habitat is an indicator of a certain disease or contamination. For example. Enterococcus species is used as an indicator of fecal pollution in environmental waters, while the detection of species-specific Enterococcus faeciutn is used as an indicator of human fecal pollution [13]. On the other hand, the presence of some bacteria almost certainly indicate an infection for example, Mycobacterium tuberculosis causes tuberculosis, and Streptococcus and Pseudomonas cause pneumonia. 

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