DefinePK

Abstract

Dredging work involves a range of marine soils, varying from coarse to fine, clean to contaminated. Dredging involves excavation and disposal and both processes could affect the marine environment through release of possible contaminants. Due to the potential for transmission of diseases, this hazard becomes a major concern as the Dredged Marine Soils (DMS) have its own values for reuse or recycle purposes. To prevent the needless cost and time involved in assessing several of pathogen bacteria, the indicator bacteria, Escherichia coli (E. coli) been used to assess the biological contamination in marine environment. The effect of natural factors, solar exposure and depth of soil were investigated. The main goal is to understand bacteria survival ability, as an approach to deal with the hazards. Under the condition without the existence of predatory microorganisms, experiments are performed at nine hours of solar exposure. In laboratory solar exposure experiments, the data dealing with the survival of bacteria showed that the cell reduction was more pronounced when compared to the absence of solar threat. After an extended period of solar exposures, as high as 90 - 99 % of E. coli have being removed.