ABSTRACT
It is estimated that infectious diseases account for almost 40 per cent of all deaths globally, with an even higher share in developing countries. Cases of food-borne-illness, which result 91 per cent from bacteria, are on the order of 81 million cases per year, alone in the USA. In the water treatment and supply industry, the transmission of diseases is based on inappropriate treatment methods, failure in operation and supervision, or shortcomings in quality monitoring. Due to the large number and diversity of potentially harmful microorganisms, it is useful to rely on the detection of suitable indicator bacteria to infer microbial water quality. Thermotolerant coliforms (ThCs) and enterococci have been deployed as fecal indicator bacteria (FIB). FIB have been used successfully for more than a century as surrogates for human enteric pathogens. This chapter concentrates on techniques for the detection of E. coli as proxy for fecal contamination.
