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SEVERITY OF ILLNESS RESULTS FOR EPIDEMIOLOGIC RECREATIONAL WATER STUDIES
Citation:
SAMS, E. A., T. J. WADE, R. L. CALDERON, M. BEACH, K. P. BRENNER, AND A. P. DUFOUR. SEVERITY OF ILLNESS RESULTS FOR EPIDEMIOLOGIC RECREATIONAL WATER STUDIES. Presented at National Beaches Conference, Niagara Falls, NY, October 11 - 13, 2006.
Description:
The NEEAR Water Study surveyed 21,105 beachgoers at four freshwater coastal beaches. It has been well documented that beachgoers experience more illness than persons that do not frequent beach areas. Reported symptoms among beachgoers for this study are gastrointestinal illness, eye irritation, earache, respiratory and skin infection. These diseases are sometimes considered mild with little impact on people's lives and do not warrant great attention by public health officials. Few studies, however, quantified the burden associated with such illnesses.
This study incorporates follow-up indicator measurements for health impact including physician visits, physician calls, total or partial elimination of daily activities, emergency room visits, prescription and over-the-counter medication use. Although gastrointestinal illness has been long considered the focus of recreational water exposure, other diseases such as respiratory illness can be associated with higher health burden costs.
Over 3% of all beachgoers reported a GI illness that resulted in loss of regular activity. Respiratory symptoms resulted in the most physician visits (230) and the most prescribed medications (264). Rash and skin infections were most likely to result in the use of over the counter medications. Although earaches were infrequently reported among all respondents, over 25% of those with an earache visited a doctor and 3% visited the emergency room.
Assessment of illness severity associated with recreational water exposure is an important first step toward determining accurate impact of those illnesses. Although many illnesses are mild in nature, these results demonstrate they have the potential to result in significant discomfort and burden.
This is an abstract of a proposed presentation and does not necessarily reflect EPA policy.