A serious concern for managers of water resources, pathogens in the urban environment easily enter waters through a number of pathways, including discharge of inadequately treated sewage, stormwater runoff, combined sewer overflows and sanitary sewer overflows. Pathogens in US ambient water bodies are regulated under the Clean Water Act (CWA), while pathogens in drinking water supplies are regu...

Outbreaks are both a demonstration of a breakdown or failure in the system and, by acting as a ‘natural experiment’, present an opportunity to provide new insights into disease transmission and, perhaps, improvements to the system. This chapter outlines in detail the surveillance systems in Sweden and the US that are designed to detect waterborne disease outbreaks, and examines the actions take...

Recovery of degraded reefs is dependent on the settlement of coral larvae into habitats typically dominated by benthic algae, so that benthic algae may play pivotal roles in coral settlement and reef recovery. Here we demonstrate that waterborne influences of macroalgae could affect coral settlement before larvae contact reef substrata and that such effects vary between macroalgae. We tested fo...

Waterborne parasites that infect both humans and animals are common causes of diarrhoeal illness, but the relative importance of transmission between humans and animals and vice versa remains poorly understood. Transmission of infection from animals to humans via environmental reservoirs, such as water sources, has attracted attention as a potential source of endemic and epidemic infections, bu...

Metals like iron (Fe) and copper (Cu) function as integral components in many biological reactions, and, in excess, these essential metals are toxic, and organisms must control metal acquisition and excretion. We examined the effects of chronic waterborne Cu exposure and the interactive effects of elevated dietary Fe on gene expression and tissue metal accumulation in zebrafish. Softwater accli...

INTRODUCTION Statistics on disease outbreaks associated with contaminated drinking water in the United States have been collected and analyzed for various time periods since 1920 [1-6]. These analyses have informed research, regulatory, and industry actions to improve drinking water quality and reduce waterborne disease risks. For example, the causes of outbreaks reported during 1961-1970 [4] w...

The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that 2.2 million deaths occur each year because of diarrheal diseases. Data from WHO show that diarrheal illnesses are a significant cause of mortality in children under five years old in six world regions; however, there are few comparative data on the burden of foodborne diseases, which are primarily diarrheal, among the general population in ...

A number of toxicity sensors for testing field water using a range of eukaryotic cell types have been proposed, but it has been difficult to identify sensors with both appropriate sensitivity to toxicants and the potential for long-term viability. Assessment of bovine pulmonary artery endothelial cell (BPAEC) monolayer electrical impedance with electric cell-substrate impedance sensing (ECIS) s...