Dose-response relationships relating population infection and illness responses to drinking water dose are important to support development of drinking water and wastewater reuse policy. Illness endpoints, in particular, are of primary importance in economic benefits assessment and management of risk. Dose-response relationships for both endpoints, therefore, are needed for assessing the full extent of disease burden attributable to pathogens in drinking water and to evaluate the need for new regulation. The purpose of this document is to present the predictive Bayesian framework as an alternative to the current methods for expressing the risk of infection and illness resulting from exposure to pathogens in drinking water. Secondarily, an alternative non-Poisson approach for characterizing the exposure distribution at the tap is offered in the context of the dose-response function. Together, these new methods may provide a more realistic and rigorous depiction of the impact of water-borne pathogens on drinking water consumers.

"EPA/600/R-08/033" "March 2008." Title from title screen (viewed on June 2, 2008).

The purpose of this document is to describe a body of literature on a predictive (unconditional) Bayesian framework as an alternative to the currently used approach (variations on ILSI, 2000) to express the risk of infection and illness resulting from exposure to pathogens in drinking water. Secondarily, an alternative to the Poisson distribution for characterizing pathogens in tap water is also described. Together, these new methods may provide a more realistic and rigorous depiction of the impact of water-borne pathogens on drinking water consumers.