Monitoring of three drinking water treatment plants using flow cytometry

Helmi, Karim; Watt, Anneliese; Jacob, Pauline; Ben-Hadj-Salah, I.; Henry, A.; Méheut, G.; Charni-Ben-Tabassi, N.

doi:10.2166/ws.2014.044

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…FCM is a fast, accurate, quantitative and reproducible technique for counting the total number of bacteria when a general nucleic acid stain is used (Hammes et al, 2008;Wang et al, 2010;Prest et al, 2013) or the number of viable bacteria when combined with viability stains (Berney et al, 2008;Helmi et al, 2014b).…”

Section: Fcm Cell Concentrations As An Alternative To Hpcmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Monitoring treatment processes: FCM was used to characterise drinking water treatment processes in a large number of studies (e.g., Hoefel et al, 2005aHoefel et al, , 2005bHammes et al, 2008Hammes et al, , 2010bHo et al, 2012;Vital et al, 2012;Lautenschlager et al, 2014;Helmi et al, 2014b;Example S2). In studies by Hammes et al In that study, HPC data showed no difference between the different treatment options.…”

Section: Fcm Provides Relevant Quantitative Process Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A cost comparison for HPC versus FCM was done recently (Helmi et al, 2014b), which showed higher cost of FCM compared to HPC for samples. However, for the purpose of this review the comparison was revised based on our in-house instrumentation and protocols for FCM, as well as information from a routine laboratory for HPC analysis, including all amortization, consumables, quality control and labour costs ( (Helmi et al, 2014b) are based entirely on high-income countries, where labour costs are decisive. For low-income countries, the high initial investment for FCM may be more demanding, and labour costs for HPC would be less.…”

Section: Fcm Analysis Can Be Cost-beneficialmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Disinfection (e.g., chlorination) is common in drinking water treatment worldwide and in such a case the use of FCM-TCC provides limited information and can lead to erroneous conclusions. Viability staining (e.g., for membrane integrity, membrane potential or metabolic activity) combined with FCM can serve as an alternative (Berney et al, 2008;Helmi et al, 2014b). A broad range of viability stains for different bacterial targets exist (e.g., SYTOX Green for damaged membranes and carboxyfluorescein diacetate (CFDA) for esterase enzyme activity), providing information that is regarded as indicators of bacterial viability and/or activity (Hammes et al, 2011).…”

Section: Detecting Disinfection: How Dead Is Dead?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2010b) and in Example S2 (a subset of data fromVital et al (2012)), disinfection through ozonation was not correctly measured with routine HPC analysis, due in part to low cultivability of bacteria in the source water, but could clearly be shown with FCM-TCC Helmi et al (2014b). measured increased bacterial abundance after activated carbon filtration with different FCM methods, but these increases went undetected in some cases with routine HPC methods.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Flow cytometric bacterial cell counts challenge conventional heterotrophic plate counts for routine microbiological drinking water monitoring

et al. 2017

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Drinking water utilities and researchers continue to rely on the century-old heterotrophic plate counts (HPC) method for routine assessment of general microbiological water quality. Bacterial cell counting with flow cytometry (FCM) is one of a number of alternative methods that challenge this status quo and provide an opportunity for improved water quality monitoring. After more than a decade of application in drinking water research, FCM methodology is optimised and established for routine application, supported by a considerable amount of data from multiple full-scale studies. Bacterial cell concentrations obtained by FCM enable quantification of the entire bacterial community instead of the minute fraction of cultivable bacteria detected with HPC (typically < 1% of all bacteria). FCM measurements are reproducible with relative standard deviations below 3% and can be available within 15 min of samples arriving in the laboratory. High throughput sample processing and complete automation are feasible and FCM analysis is arguably less expensive than HPC when measuring more than 15 water samples per day, depending on the laboratory and selected staining procedure(s). Moreover, many studies have shown FCM total (TCC) and intact (ICC) cell concentrations to be reliable and robust process variables, responsive to changes in the bacterial abundance and relevant for characterising and monitoring drinking water treatment and distribution systems. The purpose of this critical review is to initiate a constructive discussion on whether FCM could replace HPC in routine water quality monitoring. We argue that FCM provides a faster, more descriptive and more representative quantification of bacterial abundance in drinking water.

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