Simultaneous Recovery of Cryptosporidium parvum Oocysts, Escherichia coli and MS-2 Coliphage from Water Using a Disposable Ultrafilter

Contamination of drinking and bathing water from both human and animal sources is known to cause outbreaks of gastrointestinal disease. The agents involved in these outbreaks can be bacterial, viral or protozoan. Since these agents vary in many characteristic, including size, each type of organism has traditionally required a different concentration technique for recovery from environmental samples. The use of a single primary concentration technique would simplify recovery and greatly reduce time and costs of water monitoring. In addition, there is a particular need for alternative technologies for concentrating Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts from water because the current method is labor intensive and unreliable. Therefore, we evaluated a small, inexpensive disposable dialysis ultrafilter for the simultaneous recovery of viruses, bacteria and protozoans from spiked water samples. A 10-50L sample of raw source water or treated drinking water was seeded with Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts, E. coli and MS-2 coliphage at both high and low inputs. The seeded sample was passed through the filter using a peristaltic pump. When the retentate volume containing the organisms was