Microbial Contamination in Drinking Water: Occurrence, Measurement and Control

Drinking water is essential for the health, everyday life and social development of human beings. Its importance is evident to all the people. Because China now is experiencing an unprecedented urbanization progress in the world, its demand for enough and clear drinking water is expanding every year. Unfortunately, many cities and towns in China are suffering from the pollution of source water, which results in the deterioration of drinking water quality. The so-called “micro-pollution in source water” has become a nationwide problem for the water utilities. This is even serious for the relatively developed areas such as the Yangtze River delta area and the Pearl River delta with Shanghai and Guangzhou as their central metropolises, respectively. The contaminants in drinking water can be categorized into chemical ones and microbial ones. The former includes the trace level persistent organic pollutants, endocrine disrupting compounds and mutagenic disinfection byproducts (DBPs). The microbial contaminants in drinking water discussed in this mini-review include the following: (1) the emerging waterborne pathogens consisting of bacteria, protozoa and viruses, such as E. coli