Overnight stagnation of drinking water in household taps induces microbial growth and changes in community composition

Drinking water quality is routinely monitored in the distribution network but not inside households at the point of consumption. Fluctuating temperatures, residence times (stagnation), pipe materials and decreasing pipe diameters can promote bacterial growth in buildings. To test the influence of stagnation in households on the bacterial cell concentrations and composition, water was sampled from 10 separate households after overnight stagnation and after flushing the taps. Cell concentrations, measured by flow cytometry, increased (2-3-fold) in all water samples after stagnation. This increase was also observed in adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP) concentrations (2-18-fold) and heterotrophic plate counts (4-580-fold). An observed increase in cell biovolume and ATP-per-cell concentrations furthermore suggests that the increase in cell concentrations was due to microbial growth. After 5 min flushing of the taps, cell concentrations and water temperature decreased to the level generally found in the drinking water network. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis also showed a change in the microbial composition after stagnation. This study showed that water stagnation in household pipes results in considerable microbial changes. While hygienic risk was not directly assessed, it emphasizes the need for the development of good material validation methods, recommendations and spot tests for in-house water installations. However, a simple mitigation strategy would be a short flushing of taps prior to use.     

Flow cytometry and adenosine tri-phosphate analysis: alternative possibilities to evaluate major bacteriological changes in drinking water treatment and distribution systems

An ever-growing need exists for rapid, quantitative and meaningful methods to quantify and characterize the effect of different treatment steps on the microbiological processes and events that occur during drinking water treatment and distribution. Here we compared cultivation-independent flow cytometry (FCM) and adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP) analysis with conventional cultivation-based microbiological methods, on water samples from two full-scale treatment and distribution systems. The two systems consist of nearly identical treatment trains, but their raw water quality and pre-treatment differed significantly. All of the drinking water treatment processes affected the microbiological content of the water considerably, but once treated, the finished water remained remarkably stable throughout the distribution system. Both the FCM and ATP data were able to describe the microbiology of the systems accurately, providing meaningful process data when combined with other parameters such as dissolved organic carbon analysis. Importantly, the results highlighted a complimentary value of the two independent methods: while similar trends were mostly observed, variations in ATP-per-cell values between water samples were adequately explained by differences in the FCM fingerprints of the samples. This work demonstrates the value of alternative microbial methods for process/system control, optimization and routine monitoring of the general microbial quality of water during treatment and distribution.