Bacterial Communities in Plastic-Contaminated Sites and Rusted Acrylic Wall Paint: Isolation and Characterization

Background and Objective: The possibility of microbial organisms exist in polluted environmental conditions, including long-term plastic waste landfills and also over the rusted walls at the water leak pipe regions. The present study was carried out in a major plastic dumpsite and rusted acrylic wall paint and was conceded to study the bacterial community from the contaminated sites. Materials and Methods: Soil samples were collected separately from a plastic waste filled area, for a longer period and from the rusting zone due to sanitary pipe leakage on a building's exterior wall. Serial dilution, direct isolation and pure culture methods were employed to isolate Bacterial species from those experimental samples and further identified the bacterial groups, using standard manuals. Results: A total of eighteen bacterial species were isolated and identified which include Corynebacterium sp., Flavobacterium sp., Neisseria sp., Staphylococcus sp., Streptococcus sp., Pseudomonas sp., Bacillus sp., Klebsiella sp., Bacillus sp., Corynebacterium sp., Pseudomonas sp., Escherichia coli, Bacillus sp., Yersinia sp., Planococcus sp., Yersinia sp., Klebsiella sp. and Agrobacterium sp. Conclusion: The abundant nature of bacterial species existence was noticed in the soil samples collected from the long-term land filled area with plastic wastes and in the rusted exterior wall scrap. The potential nature of the bacteria species isolated from this experiment could be applied further to test their plastic degradation potential.