New water quality test delivers positive results

THE council has found that an experiment it has been running in conjunction with DCU to speed up water quality testing on Fingal beaches, have proven to be over 96% successful in identifying and quantifying E-coli and delivers results in one hour, as opposed to the 18 to 36 hours current tests take to deliver results. The council embarked on the experiment following lobbying from Cllr Barry Martin (Ind) who wants to see ‘real-time’ water testing on our beaches that could shorten the periods beaches need to be closed following pollution events.

Reporting on the results of the experiment, the council explained: ‘During the 2016 bathing season, 130 bathing water samples were taken by Fingal County Council from all identified bathing areas in the county and submitted to the Central Laboratory, Marrowbone Lane for microbiological testing. Duplicate samples were simultaneously taken from each bathing water location and submitted to Dublin City University for testing using ColiSense, a newly developed, rapid method for quantifying E.coli.

‘Standard methods for E.coli detection can take between 18 and 36 hours. During the 2016 season, the ColiSense test gave results in just over one hour. Of the 130 samples taken, 5 samples could not be tested for a number of reasons, spillage, blocked filters etc. Of the remaining 125 samples, 96.8% were correctly classified and showed good correlation with traditional microbial methods for quantifying E.coli. Four samples were misclassified when compared with results from the Central Laboratory.’ The council added that ‘the data suggests that the ColiSense method has potential to be used as an early detection system for faecal pollution in bathing water” and said that DCU have expressed a desire to research further.

Article Fingal Independent 14th February 2017.