Water is a transparent fluid which forms the world's streams, lakes, oceans and rain and is the major constituent of the fluids of living things. Water is a liquid but often co-exist gaseous, ice and solid state. It also exists as snow, fog, dew and cloud. Water covers 71% of earth's surface which is vital for all forms of life (Lanrewaju et al., 2022).  Safe drinking water is essential to human and other life forms even though it provides no calories or organic nutrients. Access to safe drinking water has improved over the last decades in almost every part of the world, but approximately one billion people still lack access to safe water and over 2.5 billion lack accesses to sanitation. There is a clear correlation between access to safe water and gross domestic product per capita (Happy et al., 2018; Kristanti et al., 2022).

Waterborne diseases are caused by pathogenic microorganisms that most commonly are transmitted in contaminated fresh water. Water pollution is a serious problem which is caused by caused by fecal contamination due to the potential for contracting the diseases from pathogens (Sarker et al., 2021; Wen et al., 2020). Though water is essential for our day to day life, many people do not have access to clean and safe drinking water and many die of waterborne bacterial infections. Drinking water in tea stall is also very risky as proper treatment is not done normally. So the aim of this study is to assess the microbiological quality of drinking water in different teal stalls in Dhaka city. 

Study Area

This research was conducted to research and cultivation laboratory, Primeasia University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. 

Study Duration

The project was conducted to 12th October, 2015 to 20th February, 2017.

Samples Collection

Nine water samples were collected from different areas in Dhaka city. The areas are:

• Mouchak
• Farmgate
• Jatrabari
• Nikunja
• Kallyanpur
• Banani
• Airport
• Sayadabad
• Shahajadpur

Media Used

Total of 4 media were used in this study. The media were:

• Mac-Conkey Agar
• TCBS Agar
• SS Agar
• Nutrient Agar

Lab Procedure 

All the water samples were inoculated to nutrient agar first and incubated for 24-48 hours at 37C. The positive samples with growth then sub cultured to selective media for 24-48 hours at 37C. The results were confirmed by physical monitoring of the colonies supported with Gram staining results. 

Statistical Analysis

IBM SPSS software version 22 was used for statistical data analysis. 

Contamination of drinking water is one of the greatest health problems worldwide, particularly in developing countries. This study aimed to analyze the bacterial contamination in drinking water of various tea stall sources of Dhaka city and analyzed in Primeasia University, microbiology department. 

Table 1 reveals that growth was found in all the selected tea stall areas of Dhaka city. E.coli was the most predominant organism found in maximum location tea stall drinking water. Mouchak, Farmgate. Nikunja, Banani, Airport, Shahajadpur are the area where E.coli was found. E. coli is recognized as key indicator organism in worldwide for fecal pollution in water (Ashbolt et al., 2001). Its presence strongly suggests that the supply of water has greatly been exposed to animal or human waste, harboring potentially other pathogenic microorganisms, like Shigella,   Salmonella, and Vibrio species.  As per guidelines of World Health Organization (WHO), zero E.coli or detectable fecal coliforms should be contained in drinking water in any 100 ml sample (WHO, 2017).

Table 1: Isolates from Different Area Tea Stall Drinking Water.

Jatrabari and Saydabad are the areas where vibrio spp. was found and only in Kallyanpur, salmonella spp. was found. Most of the areas, the results were TNTC which means too numerous to count in 100ml filtration method and the results were TFTC which means too few to count in 100 micro litre spread plate technique method. V. cholerae, are the  causative  agents  of  cholera  (Albert  et  al.,  2024)  and in  aquatic  environments,  especially with poor water hygiene under warm conditions (Colwell, 1996; Rahman et al., 2019).

Due to time and resource limitations, the spp. and Vibrio spp. were commonly found in water samples and Escherichia coli was the prominent and indicates the presence of fecal coliform contamination which was so alarming. Similar type of findings can be occurred in the other areas of Dhaka city as well all over Bangladesh. Regular microbiological testing should be performed in the tea stalls of different areas of Dhaka city and people should be aware of drinking this water. All the people should be aware of drinking this type of tea stall water. research was conducted as a cross sectional study and the study   revealed that tea stall drinking water collected from 9 different areas were contaminated with various   disease   causing bacterial species. Strains of E. coli, Salmonella

S.G.: performed all the laboratory works, A.U.Z.: prepared the manuscript, S.G.; and A.U.Z.: prepared the figure and tables, S.U.Z.: advised and supervised in whole laboratory works and manuscript writing.

Special thanks should be given to all the supporting staffs of the lab for further co-operation.

The authors announce that there is no conflict of interest with respect to the publication of this article.