Eco-friendly management of enteroviruses in wastewater

The wastewater treatment facility in El-Manzala (sedimentation basins followed by vegetated cells) was investigated to evaluate its performance as a low cost treatment facility in managing viral pollution. Sedimentation basins are considered to be physical treatment, while vegetated cells are considered as biological treatment. Enteroviruses were detected and determined using two techniques, cell culture as infectivity assay and real time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (real time RT-PCR) as a molecular biological technology.The results revealed that the wastewater treatment facility in El-Manzala showed good performance under Egyptian climatic conditions. The aquatic macrophytes system (biological treatment) showed better performance compared to the sedimentation basins (physical treatment) in removing viral loads. Enteroviruses load at the wetland inlet ranged between 50 and 100% as viral infectivity (VI) by cell culture, and between 4.9 × 104 and 59.5 × 105 gene copies (GC) by real time RT-PCR. The virus load after sedimentation basins ranged between 25 and 50% as VI and between 3.7 × 102 and 4.5 × 104 GC, while after the biological treatment recorded 0% as VI and between 0 and 2 GC.An empirical model was developed to describe the relationship between the quantity of enteroviruses using molecular biology and infective assay as a predictor variable.The present study concluded that the wastewater treatment wetland in El-Manzala can be considered as an effective facility in reducing viral contamination of the Bahr El-Baqar drainage water.