Caliciviruses are disseminated by the fecal-oral route and are found in contaminated surface and ground waters. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is interested in preventing calicivirus contamination in treated waters used for consumption, and these viruses are on the EPA's "contaminant candidate list" for regulatory consideration in drinking waters. These viruses also present a heal...

Improving the microbiological quality of coastal and river waters relies on the development of reliable markers that are capable of determining sources of fecal pollution. Recently, a principal component analysis (PCA) method based on six stanol compounds (i.e. 5β-cholestan-3β-ol (coprostanol), 5β-cholestan-3α-ol (epicoprostanol), 24-methyl-5α-cholestan-3β-ol (campestanol), 24-ethyl-5α-cholesta...

Intensification of land use and urbanisation in New Zealand are compromising the quality of surface waters. Managing the environmental load of microbes from diffuse sources, such as agriculture, is particularly challenging. Microbial contamination of water is a complex area of environmental management, and our understanding of the subject is incomplete. Many different stakeholders are involved ...

sels, are employed as surveillanceorganisms for marine pollutants (artificially produced radionuclides, petroleum hydrocarbons, metals, and chlorinated hydrocarbons used industrially and as biocides in coastal waters). Varying degrees of contamination in US coastal waters have been indicated by the elevated levels of these substances in the soft parts of bivalves. [The Sd® indicates that this p...

Concentrations of 5 trace elements (cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, zinc) in 3 species of barnacle and the mussel Perna viridis were determined for up to 18 sites in Hong Kong coastal waters. Although each species accumulated differing absolute amounts of metals, qualitative agreement between contamination profiles exhibited by the 4 species for all elements other than cadmium was excellent Th...

In a continuing effort to develop inexpensive source tracking methods to detect human fecal contamination in environmental waters, we combined targeted sampling with fluorometry. Targeted sampling works by identifying hotspots of fecal contamination through multiple samplings over everdecreasing distances. Fluorometry identifies human fecal contamination by detecting optical brighteners, primar...

The Mighan playa/lake is characterized as a closed catchment. In the recent years, the rapid industrialization and urbanization has resulted in a pollution area in the city of Arak. In this work, we focus on six regions around the playa/lake to study the distribution of heavy metals in the waters and their contamination risk. A total of 32 water samples are analyzed to determine the conta...

Portuguese freshwater reservoirs are important socio-economic resources, namely for recreational use. National legislation concerning bathing waters does not include mandatory levels or guidelines for cyanobacteria and cyanotoxins. This is an issue of concern since cyanotoxin-based evidence is insufficient to change the law, and the collection of scientific evidence has been hampered by the lac...