Bacterial community of some waste dumpsites in Lagos, Nigeria

1* Moro, D.D. , 2 Bello, H.O. and Akano, 3S.O.
Page No. 29-35

Bacteriological analysis of 120 soil samples from dumpsites in Ojo, Lagos, with standard
microbiological techniques revealed the total viable aerobic bacterial count as 2.19 x107 cfu/mg
soil on eosin methylene blue ( EMB) agar and 5.12 x 108 cfu/mg soil on MacConkey (MCC ) agar,
indicating that the bacterial count is higher on MCC than on EMB. The bacterial isolates and their
frequency of isolation from dumpsites were Escherichia coli (33.3%), Klebsiella spp. (16.7%)
,Pseudomonas spp. (13.3%), Proteus spp.(10%), Streptococcus spp. (8.3%), Salmonella spp.
(6.7%), Staphylococcus aureus (6.7%) and Enterobacter spp. (5.0%). The high presence of
pathogenic bacteria from dumpsites is of serious public health concern and highly significant.
Antibiotic susceptibility testing using the disc diffusion technique showed that most of the bacterial
species isolated were susceptible to ciproval, traflox and norfloxacin, but were highly resistant to
cephalaxin and chloramphenicol.
Keywords: Bacteria, dumpsites, Bacterial counts, pathogens, antibiotic resistance.