Journal of Environmental Biology

Microbial pollution of water in Golbasi lake in Adiyaman, Turkey

Emin Toroglu¹ and Sevil Toroglu*²

¹Geography Department, Science and Art Faculty, Kahramanmaras SutcuImam University, 46045, Kahramanmaras, Turkey

²Biology Department, Science and Art Faculty, Kahramanmaras SutcuImam University, 46045, Kahramanmaras, Turkey

(Received: June 18, 2007; Revised received: November 10, 2007; Accepted: January 05, 2008)

Abstract: An experiment was designed to examine microbiology of water samples of Gölbasi lake and to assess the occurence of multiple antibiotic resistances in Escherichia coli from them. Total aerobic bacteria number in the lake was determined as 20x10³ cfu ml^-1and fecal coliforms were determined >1100 MPN/100ml. Collected water samples from four geographically dispersed stations were screened for the E.coli and assessed for their resistance to twelve different antibiotics, which are commonly encountered in the lake. Of the total 13 E.coli isolates, 0% were susceptible to all antibiotics. All of isolates were found resistant to Penicillin (P) (100%). Among the twelve antibiotics tested, four patterns of antibiotic resistance were obtained and all of them were multiple antibiotic resistance with the number of antibiotics ranging from 2 to 5. Three isolates had beta-lactamase detected by iodometric slide test. The results indicated that persistent use of antibiotics against human diseases and other life forms may pollute the lake water and their impact on developing antibiotic resistant E.coli may be a serious threat in both health and environment.

Key words: Antibiotic resistance, Escherichia coli, Beta-lactamase, Fecal coliform, Environmental pollution, Gölbasi lake

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