KWR researcher Helena Sales Ortells talks on the Catalan Radio program 'Eureka' about Q fever

'Eureka!' is a Catalan radio program on the popularization of science. As part of the program, scientists living in other countries all around the world talk about fresh scientific, economic, social or cultural topics. Last week KWR researcher Helena Sales Ortells was interviewed about her research in The Netherlands.The interview was focused, in general, on the health risks people are exposed to (E.coli, Legionella, Cryptosporidium, Norovirus, etc.) through their contact with urban water systems. The last part of the interview was about the risk of Q fever through inhalation of shower aerosols proceeding from aerated groundwater. Helena will be interviewed in the program monthly, talking every time about a different topical (science-related) subject in The Netherlands.

Listen to Helena Sales Ortells here (from minute 13.30 to 19.05).

Wim Hijnen wrote 'Quantitative Methods to Assess Capacity of Water Treatment to Eliminate Micro-Organisms'

Click here to download:
Wim Hijnen IWA-publicatie isbn9781843393764_contents.pdf (82 KB)

Ever since the recognition of the important role of water in the transmission of pathogenic micro-organisms in the 19th century, microbiological safety of drinking water has been a major research issue for microbiologists in the drinking water industry.

 

The main objective of this book is to develop a general strategy to assess elimination capacity of water treatment processes for pathogens. It investigates:  

  • The potential use of faecal indicators Coli44, (including E. Coli) and SSRC, (including C. perfringens) as process indicators to assess pathogen elimination in full-scale water treatment plants.
  • The value of comparative challenge tests with pre-cultured organisms for the assessment of elimination capacity of full-scale processes, to study the effect of process conditions and to validate the use of process indicators.
  • The use of literature data to assess elimination capacity of water treatment processes for pathogens and the effect of process conditions on this.

This title belongs to KWR Watercycle Research Institute Series.

KWR peer reviewed: Preliminary study on the occurrence and risk arising from bacteria internalized in zooplankton in drinking water

Recentelijk publiceerden Bichai, F., Hijnen, W., Baars, E., Rosielle, M., Dullemont, Y. and Barbeau, B. in: Water Science and Technology 63(2011)1, p. 108-114.

 

Abstract 
In this study, an environmental sampling campaign was conducted to detect internalized E. coli and C. jejuni bacteria in zooplankton and amoebae samples collected at various stages of three water treatment plants in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Eight sampling locations were selected and sampling was performed twice, at a two-week interval, at each location. Chlorination was used to inactivate free (external) bacteria in the concentrated zooplankton samples and sonication was used to disrupt zooplankton organisms in order to release and recover internalized bacteria. Zooplankton enumeration was performed by microscopy. No internalized E. coli or C. jejuni bacteria were recovered from all of the samples analyzed. The occurrence of internalized E. coli or C. jejuni bacteria in drinking water was estimated to be lower than one internalized bacteria in 10(5) zooplankton organisms, as derived from the detection limit of the sampling campaign. By using the QMRA approach and the Beta-Poisson model, a risk of infection of less than 9.2E-6 and 5.9E-5 was estimated for internalized E. coli and C. jejuni in drinking water, respectively. This study remains preliminary due to the limited number of samples taken at each location.

 

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21245561

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