INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY 

Production and sale of sachet water, popularly called “pure water” in Nigeria, is presently a lucrative business, therefore many people are involved in the production and marketing of the product. Water is one of the most important as well as one of the most abundant compound on earth, and is vital to the survival of any organism (Tortora et al., 2002).Water in nature is seldom totally pure. Rainfall is contaminated as it falls to earth (Ajewole, 2005). The combustion of fossil fuel put sulphur compounds as being responsible for pollution of rain water by precipitation (Edema et al., 2001). However, water that moves below the ground surface undergoes natural filtration that removes most organisms. For this reason, water from springs and deep wells are generally of better quality than flowing water. Water related diseases continue to be one of the major health issue globally. The high revalence of diarrhoea among children and infants can be traced to the use of unsafe water and unhygienic practices (Omalu et al., 2010).  The most dangerous form of water pollution occur when fecal contaminants like Escherichia coli enter the water supply and also through the fecal-oral routes of transmission. Microbial contaminants in water supply are the sources of many diseases such as typhoid fever, cholera, bacillary dysentery and so on. Examples of such microbial contaminants are Salmonella spp., Shigella spp.,Vibrio cholerae, Escherichia coli (Edema et al.,2001; Tortora et al., 2002). Various opportunistic pathogens that occur naturally in the environment may cause disease in humans.

Those who are at greater risk of infection are infants and young children, people whose immune system is suppressed, the sick and the elderly. In such individuals, drinking water containing large numbers of opportunistic pathogens can occasionally produce infections. Examples of such opportunistic pathogens are Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella spp., Areomonas spp., and certain slow growing Mycobacterium (WHO, 2001) in Nigeria, the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration Control (NAFDAC) in association with the World Health Organization (WHO, 2001) has the responsibility of regulating the standard of drinking water. The agency has published guidelines for the production of sachet- packaged drinking water. Unfortunately most producers do not adhere to these guidelines (Onemano et al., 2003). Thus, this work is aimed at assessing the microbiological quality of sachet packaged water in three Local government areas in Ibadan.