Virus in water. I. A preliminary study on a flow-through gauze sampler for recovering virus from waters

A preliminary study was carried out on evaluating a flow-through gauze sampler for its efficiency in recovering virus from both fresh and seawater. An attenuated type 1 poliovirus was used as the working model. When tap water was sampled, the amounts of virus adsorbed by the gauze pads were very small, about 2% of the total number of virus particles flowing through the device. The virus adsorption and recovery increased to 15 to 19% when seawater was sampled. Addition of NaCl to tap water produced a much better effect on virus adsorption and recovery by this device, i.e., 47% of the total virus particles in each sample. The best viral elution from the pads was obtained by using buffer solution of pH 8.0 to 9.0 containing a small amount of animal serum. Repeated elutions from the pads were necessary to recover the most virus although the first eluate contained approximately 50% of the adsorbed virus. Further development of this device appears warranted, because of (i) the simplicity of the procedure, (ii) its capability of sampling large volume of water, (iii) the low cost of collecting samples, and (iv) the feasibility of obtaining a rough quantitative assessment of viral pollutants in water examined.