The UK River Summit & Proteus Instruments present ‘real-time E. coli data’
Live E. coli data from the river Thames, Windsor.
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We’re excited to launch our collaborative E. coli monitoring project. In partnership with The UK River Summit & Festival, we’re installing a real-time water quality monitor—making live E. coli data publicly accessible in the UK for the first time.
The Proteus sonde was installed in the river Thames, Windsor.
Total coliforms, Faecal coliforms and E. Coli – What’s the difference?
In the context of water quality, Total Coliforms (TCs) are all the coliforms found in the soil, waters and in mammal waste.
Within the TC group, Faecal Coliforms (FCs) are a subset classified by their presence in the gut and faeces of warm-blooded mammals; therefore, seen as a general indicator of faecal pollution in water.
Sometime FCs are used interchangeably with Thermotolerant Coliforms (TTCs), a term used to classify bacteria that can tolerate temperatures above 44 °C. Previously it was thought that the higher temperature tolerance eradicated non-faecal bacteria however this is no longer the case meaning TTCs are not necessarily only faecal in origin and the term is less popular.
E. coli are a species of bacteria that are found in the FC group, set apart from other bacterial species in the group by the fact they are the only species that generally cannot originate naturally in the environment and therefore must have a faecal origin. As such, E. coli are a strong faecal indicator bacteria (FIB) for detecting faecal contamination.
