A one-year monitoring of Cryptosporidium oocysts and Giardia cysts was conducted at a water purification plant. A total of thirteen 50 L samples of river source water and twenty-six 2,000 L samples of filtered water (treated by coagulation-flocculation, sedimentation and rapid filtration) were concentrated using a hollow fibre ultrafiltration membrane module at a purification plant. Cryptosporidium oocysts were detected in all raw water samples with a geometric mean concentration of 400 oocysts/m3 (range 160-1,500 oocysts/m3). Giardia cysts were detected in 12/13 raw waters (92%) with a geometric mean concentration of 170 cysts/m3 (range 40-580 oocysts/m3). Probability distributions of both Cryptosporidium oocyst and Giardia cyst concentration in raw water were nearly log-normal. In filtered water samples, Cryptosporidium oocysts were detected in 9/26 samples (35%) with a geometric mean concentration of 1.2 oocysts/m3 (range 0.5-8 oocysts/m3) and Giardia cysts in three samples (12%) with 0.8 cysts/m3 (range 0.5-2 oocysts/m3). The estimated removal of Cryptosporidium oocysts and Giardia cysts was, respectively, 2.54 log10 and 2.53 log10 on the basis of geometric means, 3.20 and 3.57 log10 on the basis of 50% observation level and 2.70 and 2.90 log10 on the basis of 90% observation level.
Cryptosporidium in small water systems in Puerto Rico: a pilot study