faecal coliform bacteria

Samples from the river show the water has 1.5 million faecal coliform bacteria per 100mL of water.

According to official standards, water safe for bathing should not contain more than 500 faecal coliforms per 100ml, yet upstream of Varanasi's ghats the river water already contains 120 times as much, 60,000 faecal coliform bacteria per 100 ml.

Varanasi, a city of one million people that many pilgrims visit to take a "holy dip" in the Ganges, releases around 200 million litres of untreated human sewage into the river each day, leading to large concentrations of faecal coliform bacteria.

A monitoring programme established in 1974 revealed that there was considerable deterioration in water quality in the stretch of river between the sewage-treatment plant and the mouth of the canyon, including high phosphorus concentrations and high populations of faecal coliform bacteria which presented a health hazard.