Editorial: Mitigating microbial contamination of drinking water sources

Human life depends primarily on water, yet there remains a shortage of clean water for domestic use, particularly among populations in low-and middle-income countries. An estimated 144 million people currently rely on untreated surface water, and over 785 million people globally lack access to safe drinking water (Bogale, 2020). Additionally, more than 2 billion people drink water contaminated by human waste and approximately 829,000 individuals, with children under the age of five being the most exposed, die from diarrhea each year as a result of poor hand hygiene, sanitation, and drinking water (Prüss-Ustün et al., 2019). The consequences include deadly waterborne infections, including cholera, dysentery, diarrhea, typhoid, and polio, which continue to affect vulnerable populations (Tsegaw et al., 2023). Common water-borne pathogens associated with illness include viral agents such as norovirus, rotavirus, astrovirus, and adenovirus; bacterial pathogens such as Salmonella spp., Campylobacter spp., pathogenic Escherichia coli, and Shigella spp.; and parasite infections such as Cryptosporidium and Entamoeba (Prasad and Grobelak, 2020).Understanding the causes of faecal coliform contamination, such as poor sanitary practices and unsafe faecal sludge management, is crucial for designing effective water and sanitation safety plans to improve public health and nutrition in low and middle-income communities (Odey et al., 2017). To effectively mitigate microbial contamination of drinking water and enhancing water quality, a combination of strategies should be implemented. These include microbial water quality assessment and monitoring techniques, determination of sources and pathways of faecal contamination in water bodies, use of advanced microbial source tracking methods, finding low-cost technologies for detecting and mitigating microbial contamination, determining the health impacts of microbial contaminants in drinking water, designing predictive modelling of microbial contamination and associated health risks, and providing innovative wastewater treatment solutions for rural communities.This special issue has ten articles, including eight original research articles and two review articles, all of which were written by 54 authors from around the world, including Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. Tang and Lau investigated the structure of the microbial community in the effluents of two sewage treatment works before and after the chlorination processes in Hong Kong. The researchers found that, the microbiomes show different resistance and resilience after chlorination steps. Additionally, highly dissimilar genomic and transcriptomic profiles based on their influent types (seawater or freshwater) have been shown. Furthermore, many genes linked to waterborne illnesses and antibiotic resistance were still present in the residual microbiomes in chlorinated effluents. In another study, Demirci et al. investigated the microbiomes in 52 water samples of which 18 samples were collected from drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs) and 34 collected from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in Istanbul, Türkiye. The microbial metagenomic analysis revealed 71 phyla, 113 classes, 217 orders, 480 families, and 1,282 genera across all samples. Moreover, no antimicrobial resistance genes were detected in influlent and effluent of DWTPs. While, the resistance gene markers were detected in all effluent of WWTPs samples. Their findings revealed that there is no substantial microbiological risk difference between biological WWTPs and advanced biological WWTPs. Wen et al. Punjab Province, Pakistan. Physicochemical parameters were determined in the collected groundwater samples. In addition, the water quality index (WQI) was used to assess groundwater quality for drinking and irrigation. The findings showed that several groundwater samples had total dissolved solids (TDS), sodium (Na), potassium (K), and nitrate (NO3) concentrations exceeding the World Health Organization (WHO) acceptable limits. Furthermore, the average score of WQI was 84.57, which means that the quality of groundwater is poor and not suitable for drinking without a treatment step. The findings show that serious health issues, are influenced by groundwater pollution. The results emphasize the significance of focused water quality monitoring and public awareness campaigns to avert possible environmental and public health risks in those regions.