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U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY'S REGULATION AND MANAGEMENT OF WATERBORNE VIRUSES
Citation:
GRIMM, A. U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY'S REGULATION AND MANAGEMENT OF WATERBORNE VIRUSES. Presented at International Symposium on Waterworks Technology, Seoul, SOUTH KOREA, August 27 - 28, 2007.
Impact/Purpose:
Overarching Objectives and Links to Multi-Year Planning
This task directly supports the 2003 Drinking Water Research Program Multi-Year Plan's long term goal 2 to "develop new data, innovative tools and improved technologies to support decision making by the Office of Water on the Contaminant Candidate List and other regulatory issues" under GRPA Goal 2 (Clean and Safe Water). The overarching objective is to provide the Office of Water, Agency risk assessors and managers, academics, the scientific community, state regulators, water industry and industry spokes groups the methods they need to measure occurrence of waterborne viral pathogens. The method improvements will facilitate the development of risk-based assessments and tools used by the Agency to set regulations, policies and priorities for protecting human health and allow the Agency to assure the public that the appropriate methods are being used to demonstrate that drinking water is safe from pathogenic agents.
Specific Objectives
Subtask A: Improving sample collecting, virus concentration and sample preparation
o Develop a less expensive alternative to the Virosorb 1 MDS filter.
Subtask B: Molecular and Cultural Assays
o Investigate methods to improve the reverse transcription step in reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays by when, for what purpose, for what client.
o Development of complete real-time assays that can be used for screening environmental samples.
o Develop a reporter gene cell culture system to indicate if virus infection has occurred without the use of molecular assays.
o Use improved cell culture lines to develop assays for nonculturable or poorly growing viruses.
Description:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) manages waterborne viruses and other pathogens through the establishment of rules and regulations that are designed to ensure public health protection. The rules that currently regulate pathogens focus on the management of viruses, Cryptosporidium, Giardia, Legionella and coliforms, and use a variety of approaches to reducing the level of these organisms in water. In addition, a Contaminant Candidate List (CCL) is maintained by the Agency as a way of identifying unregulated pathogens for which more data is needed before a regulatory determination can be made. Gathering more data on both regulated and unregulated pathogens is a major driver of the microbial research at the USEPA and each of the Laboratories and Centers that make up the Office of Research and Development (ORD) contribute to this effort by conducting complementary research that is organized according to the risk assessment paradigm.