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COMPARISON OF MENTEROCOCCUS AGAR AND THE U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY-RECOMENDED ENTEROCOCCI METHODS, ME AND MEI AGAR
Citation:
Brenner, K P., S D. Siefring, AND S L. Brown. COMPARISON OF MENTEROCOCCUS AGAR AND THE U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY-RECOMENDED ENTEROCOCCI METHODS, ME AND MEI AGAR. Presented at American Society of Microbiology, Los Angeles, CA, May 21-24, 2000.
Impact/Purpose:
Develop new bathing beach monitoring protocols and new approaches for communicating risks associated with swimming and other recreational water activities.
Description:
To maintain waters that are "fishable and swimmable", mandated by the Clean Water Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is developing a list of approved methods for use in enumerating enterococci and E. coli in ambient waters. As part of this effort, we compared mEnterococcus agar (mENT), using fresh water samples and 43 different incubation schemes, with the EPA-recommended methods, mE and mEI agar, incubated at 41oC for 48 and 24 h, respectively. Although the mean recoveries of the 2 EPA methods were similar at their recommended incubation times, the recovery with mEI agar was greater than that of mE agar at 24 h and that of the verified mE recovery on Esculin-Iron agar. Both EPA methods recovered more enterococci than mENT incubated at 35oC and ast 35oC and 44.5oC. The mean 41oC mENT recoveries at 24 and 48 h were similar to those of mE agar, and the concentration at 48 h was similar to that of mEI agar. The 41oC mENT method shows promise for use in water quality monitoring programs along with the current recommended enterococci methods.