You are here:
Incidental Water Ingestion During Recreational Swimming
Citation:
DUFOUR, A. P. Incidental Water Ingestion During Recreational Swimming. Presented at 2007 International Society for Exposure Analysis Annual Meeting, Raleigh, NC, October 15 - 18, 2007.
Impact/Purpose:
Purpose: Recent legislation and Agency action plans, including the Clean Water Action Plan, the Beach Action Plan, and the Beach Act of 2000, have identified new requirements to protect recreational waters and people's health. To meet these requirements and to eliminate the shortcomings described above, research is needed to (1) develop, optimize and/or evaluate rapid, sensitive methods producing same-day results (ideally in < 2 hours) that will detect contaminated recreational water in a timely manner, (2) develop and/or evaluate water sample concentration procedures to increase the sensitivity of some of the existing rapid methods, and (3) determine the relationship between exposures and health impact using the new rapid methods and the newly-developed water sample collection protocol to provide information that is needed by the Office of Water in formulating new health and risk guidelines for recreational water. Use of the new health guidelines will allow beach managers and public health officials to alert the public about the potential health hazards in a timely manner before exposure to unsafe water can occur. Objective: The objectives of this research, outlined in detail in the four sub-tasks below, are: (1) to develop, optimize, and/or evaluate rapid state-of-the-art measurement methods for detecting microorganisms that may indicate the presence of fecal pollution in recreational waters (beaches); (2) to develop and/or evaluate water sample concentration procedures to increase the sensitivity of some of the existing rapid methods; (3) to obtain, jointly with another EPA laboratory (NHEERL), a new set of water quality data and related health effects data at a variety of freshwater and estuarine/marine water beaches across the U.S. using new, rapid, same-day detection methods and the newly-developed EPA water sample collection protocol (from the EMPACT Study); (4) to analyze the research data set from the epidemiological study to evaluate the utility of the tested measurement methods and/or concentration techniques, the new EMPACT monitoring protocol, and the health effects data and questionnaire, in order to establish a relationship between measured microorganisms and observed health effects; and (4) to communicate the results to the USEPA Office of Water in support of their efforts to develop new state and/or federal guidelines and limits for water quality indicators of fecal contamination. Use of the newly-developed methods and health guidelines will permit beach managers and public health officials to alert the public about the potential health hazards in a timely manner before exposure to unsafe water can occur.
Description:
To be presented at the 2007 International Society for Exposure Analysis Annual Meeting