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Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment (QMRA) as a Compliment to epidemiologic Studies Estimating Bather Risk at Recreational Beaches
Citation:
SCHOEN, M. E. AND N. ASHBOLT. Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment (QMRA) as a Compliment to epidemiologic Studies Estimating Bather Risk at Recreational Beaches. Presented at 137th Annual APHA Meeting , Philadelphia, PA, November 09 - 11, 2009.
Impact/Purpose:
1. Compare predicted risk of gastrointestinal (GI) illness from sewage impacted recreational water to non-sewage impacted water using QMRA. 2. Identify key uncertain pieces of information in the QMRA estimation of risk to inform future research
Description:
The US EPA and WHO have set recreational water quality standards based on epidemiologic studies to protect human health at beaches. These studies have largely been limited to sewage-impacted sites and resources are unlikely to be available to assess the myriad of other impacted sites. Here we describe how quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) can be used to assess unstudied pathogen sources in a systematic way to describe risk uncertainty. To illustrate the proposed QMRA comparison an illustrative example is provided focusing on the non-sewage example sources of seagulls and human shedders.