Two Oscillatoria strains have been isolated from three different water supply systems in California that have experienced taste and odor problems in their drinking water. The algae were obtained from sediment samples and rock scrapings from source-water reservoirs. Unialgal cultures, free of actinomycetes, were purged using the closed-loop stripping analysis method, and the resulting extracts were analyzed by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. The organisms, Oscillatoriacurviceps and O.tenuis variant levis Gardner, yielded 2-methylisoborneol (MIB) at 60–150 µg/l. In both instances, MIB had previously been identified in the sediment samples from which the organisms were isolated. O.curviceps was implicated in a taste and odor episode involving MIB in a major reservoir during two consecutive summers.
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Izaguirre et al. (1983) studied this question.