In a warning issued for North Queensland’ s town of Bowen, the residents are being advised to boil their tap water before use following an outburst of E-coli in the town’s water supply. This notification came up after more than usual level of E-coli was recorded in water testing conducted in the town, south of Townsville. It is suspected that along with E-coli in the water, there may be other harmful bacteria also.

E-coli is a bacterium that exists in human stomach and is a cause of diseases like diarrhea and vomiting but is not deadly in healthy adults. Three weeks after the warning, there will be three tests conducted, till the results come out to be negative for every test conducted as informed by the Mayor.

Mayor Mr. Brunker said, “Recent rainfall may have been to blame for the outbreak. It's the most easy to detect bacteria so we use it as an indicator, if there is E coli there that means there could be worse bacteria there”.

The effort for the removal of the bacteria from the water supply and finding out the cause of this outbreak will be assisted by water experts from Brisbane along with Queensland Health, working with the Whitsunday Regional Council.

Brunker added, “It will be some time before the water is clean enough to drink. We believe that it could be due to the fact that we have had a lot of high rainfall in Bowen in the last fortnight. There is also a low chlorine count that we're looking at as well”.