[Occurrence of Giardia cysts and Cryptosporidium oocysts in swimming pools in the province of Palermo, Italy]. / Presenza di cisti di Giardia e oocisti di Cryptosporidium in piscine della provincia di Palermo.

21 samples of waters of 7 swimming pools in the province of Palermo were investigated for the presence of Giardia cysts and Cryptosporidium oocysts. Some chemio-physical parameters (chlorine, temperature, turbidity and pH) were also evaluated as well as the presence of bacterial indicators of faecal (total coliforms, Escherichia coli and enterococci), mucocutaneous and environmental (Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) contamination. All samples were negative for bacterial indicators of faecal contamination; 3 were positive for the presence of coagulase-negative staphylococci, 1 was positive for Alcaligenes spp. and 2 for Pseudomonas aeruginosa. 8 samples proved to be positive for Giardia and 6 also for Cryptosporidium. All but one of them were coming from waters of 2 swimming pools of the same recreational center. In all samples the concentration of Giardia was substantially higher than that of Cryptosporidium. This study shows that the disinfection and filtering plants are not always suitable to ensure a good level of the quality of the waters of swimming pools and suggests that should be necessary to check them also for the presence of protozoa like Giardia and Cryptosporidium, which may be responsible for gastroenteritis.

[Development of a technique for recovering Giardia cysts and Cryptosporidium oocysts from fresh vegetables]. / Descrizione di una tecnica per la ricerca di cisti di Giardia e di oocisti di Cryptosporidium in vegetali freschi contaminati sperimentalmente.

Techniques described for recovering Giardia and Cryptosporidium (oo)cysts from fruit and vegetables are generally inadequate and present variable recovery efficience and elevated costs. The aim of our study was to evaluate the recovery efficiency of a simple and economic technique to apply either to berry vegetables, like tomatoes and peppers, or to large leave vegetables, like lettuce and chicory. The method include contamination and further elution of the vegetables. Then sedimentation of (oo)cysts by centrifugation of the eluate of vegetables and their visualization by means of direct immunofluorescence. The higher recovery values for both protozoa were obtained in large leave vegetables with mean data above 70% for Giardia and 76% for Cryptosporidium, whereas the values observed in the berry vegetables were above 43% for Giardia and above 37% for Cryptosporidium on average.