2008 Woodie Awards
Amherst water now E-coli clear
Ian Edward Detlefsen, Collegian Staff
Issue date: 9/5/08 Section: News
Over Labor Day weekend, coliform and E.coli were detected at Village Park Apartments on East Pleasant Street in North Amherst.
E.coli is a water-born bacterium which collects around stagnant pools, carcasses of the recently deceased, feces, and areas of general decay.
Robert E. Pariseau, a local water resource director, was surprised. For the first time in his 20 years on the job, a potentially harmful pathogen had been detected. He readied a boil water policy and waited.
A second test came back negative. Officials everywhere breathed easier. Stocking extra water bottles was called off. After many automated phone calls and e-mails from Town Manager Larry Shaffer, and lots of staff hours later, everyone went back to their lives free of tainted water.
Pariseau said that it may have been a flawed sample. It was mainly the coliform, an indicator of a deadly agent, that caused the commotion. As a precaution, more sterilizing chlorine was put in the pipes.
E.coli is a well-known bacterium in laboratories. Its length of study spans decades. If the strain found in North Amherst had been a pathogen, it would have been readily identified as such after its 24-hour culture had been collected and examined.
E.coli is a fixture in the lower intestinal tract for most humans. It's a bacterium that grows quickly because it has one chromosome. Among laboratory based micro-organisms, E.coli is "kind of like the white rat," says Elizabeth S. Stuart, associate professor of microbiology at the University of Massachusetts. "It's cheap to grow, cheap to maintain, and we have a lot of information on it."
Lots of research scientists can do a test using a specific strain of E.coli to compare with and add to other strains in a wide body of knowledge concerning this bacterium. It has a basic modeling system with mechanisms that can be used to explore gene expression (how genes reveal in the body), gene regulation (what controls them), DNA replication (forming new cells) and DNA repair (which looks at systems of DNA recovery, which sometimes lead to mutations such as tumors, etc. and more).
However, there are dangerous types of E.coli. Strains such as 0.157.H7, which target the young, old and weak, are tested for in many hospitals. Whether it could merely weaken the body or pose life-threatening conditions depends on the particular qualities of the bacterium and how much of it is present.
Ian Edward Detlefson can be reached at iandetlefsea@hotmail.com.
E.coli is a water-born bacterium which collects around stagnant pools, carcasses of the recently deceased, feces, and areas of general decay.
Robert E. Pariseau, a local water resource director, was surprised. For the first time in his 20 years on the job, a potentially harmful pathogen had been detected. He readied a boil water policy and waited.
A second test came back negative. Officials everywhere breathed easier. Stocking extra water bottles was called off. After many automated phone calls and e-mails from Town Manager Larry Shaffer, and lots of staff hours later, everyone went back to their lives free of tainted water.
Pariseau said that it may have been a flawed sample. It was mainly the coliform, an indicator of a deadly agent, that caused the commotion. As a precaution, more sterilizing chlorine was put in the pipes.
E.coli is a well-known bacterium in laboratories. Its length of study spans decades. If the strain found in North Amherst had been a pathogen, it would have been readily identified as such after its 24-hour culture had been collected and examined.
E.coli is a fixture in the lower intestinal tract for most humans. It's a bacterium that grows quickly because it has one chromosome. Among laboratory based micro-organisms, E.coli is "kind of like the white rat," says Elizabeth S. Stuart, associate professor of microbiology at the University of Massachusetts. "It's cheap to grow, cheap to maintain, and we have a lot of information on it."
Lots of research scientists can do a test using a specific strain of E.coli to compare with and add to other strains in a wide body of knowledge concerning this bacterium. It has a basic modeling system with mechanisms that can be used to explore gene expression (how genes reveal in the body), gene regulation (what controls them), DNA replication (forming new cells) and DNA repair (which looks at systems of DNA recovery, which sometimes lead to mutations such as tumors, etc. and more).
However, there are dangerous types of E.coli. Strains such as 0.157.H7, which target the young, old and weak, are tested for in many hospitals. Whether it could merely weaken the body or pose life-threatening conditions depends on the particular qualities of the bacterium and how much of it is present.
Ian Edward Detlefson can be reached at iandetlefsea@hotmail.com.
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