Experimenteller Beitrag zur Dermatophytenflora des Ostsee-Badestrandes

Strategies for Monitoring Microbial Life in Beach Sand for Protection of Public Health

The 2021 revised guidelines of the World Health Organization recommend monitoring the quality of sand in addition to water at recreational beaches. This review provides background information about the types of beaches, the characteristics of sand, and the microbiological parameters that should be measured. Analytical approaches are described for quantifying fungi and fecal indicator bacteria from beach sand. The review addresses strategies to assess beach sand quality, monitoring approaches, sand remediation, and the proposed way forward for beach sand monitoring programs. In the proposed way forward, recommendations are provided for acceptable levels of fungi given their distribution in the environment. Additional recommendations include evaluating FIB distributions at beaches globally to assess acceptable ranges of FIB levels, similar to those proposed for fungi.

[Demonstrated significance of fungal flora in sand-boxes]

In order to evaluate the risk of fungal contamination in sand-boxes of the city of Angers' game areas, the authors took 100 samples of sand from different environments: parks, gardens, buildings, nursery schools. They report the presence of a varied and important mycoflora and that the frequency and the distribution are more sensitive to the techniques used to isolate the fungus, as well as to the quality of the sand and to the eco-mesological factors in the four studied areas. The examination of earth samples has allowed the findings of a great number of keratinophilie species. The strains living in the sand do not represent a real danger of infection for the children.