Conexión Agropecuaria JDC (May 2013)
Contamination With Cryptosporidium Spp. in Soils of the Main Public Parks and Green Zones of the Tunja City
Abstract
Cryptosporidium has become one of the major public health problems around the world. Nowadays, Cryptosporidium has been considered as an emerging infectious disease, although it can occur as a sporadic form, the epidemic outbreaks of this zooneses are caused by drinking contaminated water; as a result of an incorrect drinking water treatment. Moreover, there are some studies related to Cryptosporidium spp. and its interaction with the land, especially, those destined to agricultural use which it has had a great impact on the public health, due to its use as wastewater for crop irrigation. In this study was possible to determine the presence of Cryptosporidium spp. in 159 soil samples which were taken from 12 different Tunja’s green parks, throughout the Ziehl Neelsen Modified staine, Spontaneous sedimentation technique. The development of this research was based on different variables such as texture, soil pH and environmental temperature. The results pointed out that some of the 80, 5% of the public parks areas were contaminated by this protozoan. Therefore, the analysis of temperature, texture and pH showed a (p <0.05) significant association between the soil texture variable and the Cryptosporidium spp. presence. Meanwhile there was not a significant association between temperature and pH. The 80.5 % evidence a high level of contaminated parks which indicates that these parks areas are an important risk factor for submission of this zoonotic diseases for public health importance. In this sense, it is necessary that the local authorities take control in order to reduce the parks contamination in Tunja.
