Autochthonous antimicrobial microorganisms: application in wastewater treatment

In the previous two decades, people's lifestyles have changed as a result of industrialization, urbanization, and modernity, resulting in a rise in pollutants in daily sewage wastewater output. Less than half of the sewage generated is processed in a sewage treatment facility, while the remaining gets discharged into rivers untreated, deviating physio-chemical parameters of river water from the standards and thus causing harm to aquatic ecosystems. Sewage water contains autochthonous bacteria such as Pseudomonas fluorescens, Bacillus sp., Acinetobacter sp. and Rhodococcus sp that are effective in decontaminating wastewater. They employ a variety of mechanisms to consume pollutants, including biosorption, bioaccumulation and enzyme-mediated bioremediation, and thus can be used in bioremediation schemes. Bacteria possessing antimicrobial activity as well as protease production can be isolated from the wastewater and employed in the sewage treatment plant. The bacterial consortium has also been shown to be successful in wastewater treatment due to the synergistic degradation capabilities of the co- cultivated bacterial strains, which enhance the uptake rate of pollutants as nutrients. Environmental factors such as temperature, pH, oxygen, and nutrition availability at the site all affect the process outcome. The major focus of this review is to emphasize the bacterial capacity to clean wastewater as a single bacterial culture or as part of a bacterial consortium and the factor affecting the degradation process to achieve the requirement of a safer environment

Evaluation of mass bathing effects on water quality status of eight prominent ponds of Haryana (India): A multi-location study

Amongst the various anthropogenic activities, mass bathing and other religious rituals also affect the water quality of aquatic ecosystem. The present research has been conducted to evaluate the impact of mass bathing and other religious activities on the eight famous religious water bodies of Haryana (Kapalmochan tirth, Kulotarn tirth, Ban-Ganga tirth, Brahmsarovar, Jyotisar, Saraswati tirth, Phalgu tirth and Pandu-Pindara tirth). The water samples were collected from three sampling stations (A, B and C) at each of the eight selected sites (S1 to S8) before and after the religious rituals and also seasonally. The samples were analyzed for Dissolved oxygen (DO), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) ammonia and heavy metals . The study highlighted the seasonal variations of physicochemical characteristics and also the effects of mass bathing and religious activities on water quality of the religious sites. Although the water was reported as safe in terms of DO content, total ammonia, BOD and the values of COD before the religious rituals but the values exceeded the maximum permissible limit {DO (0.8±0.1, 0.76±0.11), BOD (25.07±0.13, 18.13±0.13),COD (131.9±2.08), Ammonia (2.31±.23, 6.57±0.02) Iron (5890 µg L-1) and Zinc (200 µg L-1)} after mass bathing and religious rituals indicating that the water was not suitable for drinking as well as bathing purposes after the rituals/mass bathing. So, bathing during/after such rituals may become a health hazards to the bathers or users of the water and also may affect the aquatic biota, further depleting it. There is thus a need of regular monitoring and regular application of suitable remedial measures to prevent the depletion of the quality of lentic waters