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Enumerating Microorganism Surrogates for Groundwater Transport Studies Using Solid-Phase Cytometry.

Margaret E Stevenson¹, A Paul Blaschke², Sonja Schauer³

¹Centre for Water Resource Systems, Vienna University of Technology, Karlsplatz 13, 1040 Vienna, Austria.

Water, Air, and Soil Pollution

|March 1, 2014

Summary

Solid-phase cytometry (SPC) offers a sensitive method for detecting low concentrations of microspheres, valuable non-hazardous surrogates for pathogenic microorganisms in groundwater transport studies. This technique enhances the ability to track contaminants in environmental samples.

Keywords:

ChemScan™ RDI Drinking water resources Groundwater Microspheres Pathogen surrogates Solid-phase cytometry

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Area of Science:

Environmental Science
Microbiology
Analytical Chemistry

Background:

Groundwater pollution studies using pathogenic microorganisms pose health risks.
Microspheres serve as safe surrogates for microorganisms in groundwater transport research.
Existing detection methods for microspheres have high detection limits, missing rare events.

Purpose of the Study:

To evaluate the applicability and limits of solid-phase cytometry (SPC) for groundwater transport studies.
To assess SPC's capability in enumerating low concentrations of microspheres in environmental water samples.

Main Methods:

Utilized solid-phase cytometry (SPC) for quantifying fluorescently labeled microspheres.
Tested SPC sensitivity and reliability with varying microsphere sizes and water sample volumes.
Compared SPC performance against traditional detection methods for rare event analysis.

Main Results:

SPC demonstrated high sensitivity and reliability for enumerating microsphere surrogates down to 0.5 μm in 500 ml groundwater.
The method successfully detected smaller microspheres (0.75 μm) in turbid surface water samples.
SPC overcomes the limitations of high detection limits found in spectrofluorimetry, flow cytometry, and epifluorescence microscopy.

Conclusions:

Solid-phase cytometry is a powerful tool for enumerating microorganism surrogates in groundwater.
SPC is suitable for both laboratory and field applications in groundwater transport studies.
The method enables reliable detection of rare events, crucial for understanding contaminant transport.