1.1 INTRODUCTION
Urine is a liquid waste product from the kidney of both animals and humans. It is collected in the bladder and excreted through the urethra. As a waste liquid product, it contains some dissolved substances such as ammonia, urea, uric acid, and creatinine. These constitute the organic solids in the urine. Urine also contains inorganic dissolved substances such as sodium chloride, calcium, potassium, phosphate and sulfates (Cobire and Wewedo, 2002).
The dissolved substances in the urine can be utilized by microorganisms of various groups as nutrients whenever urine finds its way into the environment. This is evidenced by the fact that urine polluted environments usually have very strong odour, signifying that the biological oxygen demand (BOD) is high. This phenomenon is observe in toilets, bathrooms, street corners and fallow grounds. (Deni and Pennick, 1999).
The different groups of microorganisms can represent different microbial functions and activities. Some can be harmful relating to public health risk, or beneficial relating to positive economic value. Urine leach into ground and surface waters often with much of the nitrogen intact. When microorganisms in lakes and other surface waters consume the nitrogen. It results into a great bloom of growth. When this dies and decomposes, it pulls oxygen from the water or euthrophies, which can suffocate fish and other aquatic life. Underground nitrogen can seep into drinking water, posing a potential health hazard.
Urine contains micro pollutants such as synthetic hormones, pharmaceuticals and their metabolites, that is mainly excreted via urine (Alder, 2002) and may be harmful to the ecosystems and human health (Daughton and Ternes, 1999). Today, many micro pollutants reach the aquatic environments because their degradation in waste water treatment plant is poor (Barker and Jones, 2005).
More than just dirt hanging around the environment especially urine polluted is unhealthy.
This work plans to asses the level of bacterial building in urine contaminated campus environments and thus suggest control measures to prevent the invasion of our environment by bacterial pathogens especially the campus female hostel bathrooms which are usually polluted with urine.
1.2 AIM OF PROJECT
The aim of this work is to isolate bacteria from urine contaminated environments in additions, this work would attempt to find out whether the contaminated environments harbour pathogenic bacteria and thus, pose hazard to health.