Comparing different methods for fast screening of microbiological quality of beach sand aimed at rapid-response remediation
Résumé
There is scientific evidence that beach sands are a significant contributor to the pathogen load to which visitors
are exposed. To develop beach quality guidelines all beach zonesmust be included inmicrobiological evaluations,
but monitoring methods for beach sand quality are relatively longstanding, expensive, laborious and require
moderate laboratory infrastructure. This paper aimed to evaluate the microorganism activity in different beach
zones applying and comparing a classical method of membrane filtration (MF) with two colorimetric screening
methods based on fluorescein (FDA) and tetrazolium (TTC) salt biotransformation to evaluate a new rapid and
low-cost method for beach sand microbiological contamination assessments. The colorimetric results can help
beach managers to evaluate rapidly and at low cost the microbiological quality of different beach zones in
order to decide whether remedial actions need to be adopted to prevent exposure of the public to microbes
due to beach sand and/or water contamination