Modified H2S Paper Strip Test for Detection of Bacteriological Contamination in Drinking Water

The provision of safe drinking water to all is the priority item in the agenda of Government of India. To fulfill this requirement thousands of bore well installed in the villages. Despite of this, large population still depends upon the dug well water; shallow bore well and untreated surface waters for their drinking water needs. Hence there is need to monitor the bacteriological quality of water using field oriented test which needs to be inexpensive, fast and can be performed by unskilled person without the use of laboratory facilities. H2S paper strip test appear to meet this requirement. The objective of this paper to develop some additional characteristics of H2S paper strip test by using the chemicals of cystine, amino acid. To improve the performance of the test by adding cystine, an amino acid to the nutrient medium. The sensitivity improved as well as there was reduction in time to get the results. it was obtained 8 hours earlier than original H2S paper strip. Modified test became more sensitive, it correlated with fecal coli form 91% of the times while the original test 87% of the times. This study focused to modify the H2S strip by adding chemical cystine to the bacteriological media to improve its sensitivity and generate the correlation among total coliform, fecal coliform and H2S paper strip tests (original and modified).