Faster water testing could head off illness

VANCOUVER – Scientists in British Columbia are developing tools that will cut the time needed for water testing f rom days to just hours and allow safety officials to detect contamination in time to head off illness.

Researchers at the British Columbia Public Health Laboratories are designing a completely new approach to water testing using metagenomics.

It’s a way to detect the genetic signature of dozens of organisms all at the same time within hours of sampling.

Metagenomic testing done at the watershed rather than the tap could shorten the response time to contamination and allow public health officials to intervene in time to save people from being sickened, explained project co-leader Judith Isaac-renton.

“The tools we have at our disposal are inadequate,” said Isaac-renton.

Rather than performing individual tests for suspected pathogens, a metagenomic tool would pulverize all the organisms in a water sample and analyze bits of genetic material in the resulting soup.

Computer-driven pattern recognition software could then match the recognizable material, known as genetic markers or biomarkers, to the genetic codes of bacteria that are indicators of unhealthy water.

“We aren’t so much looking for dangerous bugs, which is slow, inaccurate and too narrow, we are looking at the signature of healthy water,” Isaac-renton explained.

Testing regimes now involve transporting water samples to labs where samples have to be cultured for one to two days to detect bacteria such as E. coli, the bug that sickened thousands and killed seven people in Walkerton, Ont., 12 years ago.