As drinking water regulators become more aware of cognitive and behavioural issues associated with manganese, new guidelines and regulations are being considered or enacted...
Hi all…on the heels of Health Canada’s new guideline for lead in drinking water, Canada’s National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health has prepared an 8-page document entitled “Testing for Lead in School Drinking Water-A Summary of Sampling Protocols.” Table 1 is a “Summary of sampling protocols for testing lead in school drinking water developed in Canada [...]
Hi all…with spring just around the corner, for some of us anyway, an interesting paper entitled “Persistence of fecal contamination and pathogenic Escherichia coli O157:H7 in snow and snowmelt” has recently been published. There has been a substantial amount of research conducted in the area of watershed protection as a key element in the production of safe drinking [...]
A new guideline for lead in drinking water has been posted on the Health Canada website. As expected, the MAC has been lowered to 0.005 mg/L (5 µg/L) as total lead. There are fact sheets available on the website...
There have been a number of studies which have been unable to link the risk of certain cancers with trihalomethanes (THMs) in drinking water over the past couple of decades. In a just published review, the authors examined trends in the incidence of bladder cancer in 8 countries in the 45 years since THMs were detected in chlorinated drinking water...
Lest we forget the lessons the May 2000 Walkerton E. coli/Campylobacter outbreak (in which seven people died, and more than 2,300 became ill) taught us I thought I’d circulate a report of a very similar animal wastewater intrusion into groundwater event that occurred in 2017 leading to a campylobacteriosis outbreak...
I came across what could be a very important article today which may not attract the attention of drinking water professionals as it has just been published in the CDCs Emerging Infectious Diseases journal which isn’t widely read in our circles. It identifies a relationship between Mycobacterium avium complex in humans and premise plumbing.
Happy New Year all! There has been a lot of interest in microplastics in water recently and it looks like this will be one this year’s hot research areas. They have the potential to be impactful on human health but a lot of science remains to be done.
A study measuring urinary fluoride levels in pregnant women in Canada has just appeared in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The authors conclude that “community water fluoridation is a major source of fluoride exposure for pregnant women living in Canada.”
Following up from the just-published article “Community Water Fluoridation and Urinary Fluoride Concentrations in a National Sample of Pregnant Women in Canada,” I circulated earlier today; I have located the article that was referenced to support their conclusions pertaining to health risks.