Coastal pollution monitoring of Southern Italian sites by the MUG assay

A five-year study was carried out on coastal samples collected from Sicilian and Calabrian areas in order to test the performance of an enzyme approach in comparison with the immunofluorescence (IF) and standard culture (FC) methods. The MUG assay was found to be more indicative of the Escherichia coli population, as estimated by IF method, than of the whole faecal coliform group determined by plate counts. The usefulness of MUG assay for monitoring mean and heavily polluted areas is suggested.