| Title |
Overview of Virus Contamination in Korean Source of Drinking Water from 4-Years(`98-`01) Monitoring |
| Authors |
정현미 ( Jeong Hyeon Mi ) ; 오상헌 ( O Sang Heon ) ; 장영진 ( Jang Yeong Jin ) ; 임연택 ( Im Yeon Taeg ) |
| Keywords |
Enteric viruses; culturable viruses; surface source water; fecal indicator; virus survey in Korea |
| Abstract |
Investigating enteric viruses in water supply and its relationships with indicator bacteria and other Dhysicochemical parameters are of highly importance for public health. No organized studies on the virus occurrence and its relations to indicator organisms in Korean source of water supplies have been reported until this study. Water treatment plants in nationwide were selected encompassing most of the provinces and major cities. From 67 water treatment plants using surface water as their source water, a total of 103 samples of intake water were tested. Viruses were detected from about 43% of the samples. The concentrations Of viruses were highly variable ranged up to 1,200 MPN/100L, but the geometric mean and median were 2.5 MPN/100L and below the detection limits, respectively. According to the Spearman rank correlation analysis, the virus occurrences were Significantly correlated with those of all three indicator bacteria such as total coliforms, fecal coliforms and E. coli, but not with that of turbidity in this sites-dependent macro-scale study. These results suggest that conventional bacteriological indicators may provide an acceptable estimate of virus contamination among the sources of water Supplies. When the type of watershed were compared, virus occurrence in river was significantly higher than that in lake by Mann-Whitney U test(p<0.05). Therefore, river tends to be more vulnerable to virus contamination than lake in Korea. |