Following up from my recent email on ‘Common themes contributing to recent drinking water disease outbreaks in affluent nations’, I’ve come across two additional Campylobacter outbreaks where, in one case, thousands were sickened and some deaths were reported. One was in Askøy near Bergen, Norway in June 2019 and appears to have run its course now.
Following up from articles and books on disease outbreaks the Hrudey’s have published another timely article on the same theme. As we have been observing in the research world we are now educating students who have not heard of the Walkerton outbreak in 2000 (or were born since then!). The study authors report that 24 drinking-waterborne disease outbreaks in affluent nations have occurred since then, pointing to the recent campylobacteriosis outbreak with 5,500 cases and four fatalities.
Hi all…some of you may have seen the CBC News story on an article entitled “Salting our freshwater lakes” which appeared in journal ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS)’ yesterday. The article presents evidence to suggest that increasing chloride levels may eventually be a threat to drinking [...]
Hi all…nitrate and nitrate in drinking water have been regulated for quite some time now (Health Canada guidelines: MAC = 10 mg/L measured as nitrate-nitrogen and 1 mg/L measured as nitrite-nitrogen). The primary concern which led to regulations/guidelines is methaemoglobinemia and not a cancer endpoint. A recent study concludes long-term ingestion of elevated nitrate in drinking water [...]
Hi all…for several decades now it has been known that phosphorus reduction is good way to control microcystis blooms (the cyanobacteria that produce the regulated microcystin-LR toxin). However, a recent article reports that “an excess of another nutrient, nitrogen, shifts the balance in favor of Microcystis rather than other HAB-forming cyanobacteria, diatoms, or green algae.” This article is open [...]
For several decades now it has been known that phosphorus reduction is good way to control microcystis blooms (the cyanobacteria that produce the regulated microcystin-LR toxin). However, a recent article reports that “an excess of another nutrient, nitrogen, shifts the balance in favor of Microcystis rather than other HAB-forming cyanobacteria, diatoms, or green algae.”
Hi all…an open access paper published today in PNAS reports that studies of deep groundwater indicate “that California’s Central Valley alone has close to three times the volume of fresh groundwater and four times the volume of underground sources of drinking water (USDWs) than previous estimates suggest.” Great news, but they then point out that [...]
