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MOVEMENT AND LONGEVITY OF VIRUSES IN THE SUBSURFACE
Citation:
AzadpourKeeley**, A, B P. Faulkner*, AND J. Chen. MOVEMENT AND LONGEVITY OF VIRUSES IN THE SUBSURFACE. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/540/S-03/500, 2003.
Impact/Purpose:
information
Description:
Since human pathogens, in particular human enteric viruses, are not completely adsorbed or inactivated by conventional waste treatment facilities, sound management practices must be devised which rely on knowledge of the fate of these pollutant in the environment in order to protect the ground-water resources from biological pollutants. Investigations focusing on the fate of biological pollutants in the soil and in the groundwater should include transport processes such as dispersion, advection, Brownian motion, and chemotaxis of bacteria and should differentiate between virus and bacteria in their transport mechanisms such as decay rate and growth kinetics.
Unfortunately, most viral transport studies have not been performed under the field conditions. Therefore, when using available virus breakthrough data, it is important to realize that there is no single virus for which its transport characteristics can be used to adequately describe the transport of all viruses. Therefore, the determination of safe septic tank set-back distances from sources of drinking water based solely on adsorption data will be unreliable unless that data is used in concert with ground-water flow characteristics.