Animal Waste, Water Quality and Human Health

340Animal Waste, Water Quality and Human Healthacross 85 communities in Northamptonshire about the problem, a boil-water advisorywas announced and local residents had to boil their water for 10 days until the sourcewas found and removed (BBC News, 25 June 2008). Approximately 1000 miles ofpipes were cleaned and flushed, bottled water was delivered to 100,000 households,and households were compensated at the cost of £3 million. Twenty schools in thearea that relied on tap water for drinking-fountains were temporarily closed.Improvement initiativePresumptive and confirmatory testing for Cryptosporidium in tap water conducted in atimely manner provided information of immediate public health importance. Actingexpeditiously on these data by informing the public through media notification,including boil-water alerts while providing safe drinking-water minimized the numberof cases, reducing morbidity and mortally. The Cryptosporidium rabbit genotype,which was not previously known to infect humans, was identified as the etiologicagent in an outbreak of diarrhoeal disease and should be considered a humanpathogen when found in future tests.Lessons for the futureRoutine monitoring at the water treatment plant enabled the detection of low levels ofCryptosporidium at an early stage and allowed the affected part of the treatmentworks to be swiftly isolated. The system of rapid public notification and thecorroboration of positive water samples with the potential source of infectiousmaterial and positive specimens from human cases by molecular methods combinedwith replacement of contaminated drinking-water by bottled water helped to keep thenumber of outbreak cases relatively low. In addition the discovery of a previouslyunrecognized human pathogen provided scientific evidence of new pathogen of publichealth concern (Chalmers et al. 2009). The model applied to this outbreak can beadopted by other water treatment companies and public health agencies.Case Study 2 Using expanded FIO monitoring, sanitary surveys and sourceattribution techniques to identify pollution sources and guide remediation at aGreat Lakes coastal beach 5BackgroundRacine, Wisconsin (WI), USA is a Great Lakes coastal community which derives aportion of its economic livelihood from tourism. In 2000, bathing-water quality5contributed by Julie Kinzelman, City of Racine, Wisconsin, USA