Model study to assess the impact of enteric pathogens in public water supply sources

Abstract

Environmental protection is a goal of most governments in the world, both from the point of view of conservation of natural resources and ecosystems and the protection of public health. The challenge for public health and the environment is to improve the quality of water destined for public supply and thus improve the level of population health and reduce, therefore, the load of pathogens in sewage, causing less impact on receiving water bodies. Therefore, monitoring and identification of pathogens released into the environment and use the approach of Quantitative Microbiological Risk Assessment (AQRM) become important in developing a model to be applied for systems producing water in their water safety plans (PSA). It is then proposed, the monitoring of raw sewage and water source at the municipality selected by SABESP. The water source must be impacted by the dumping of sewage and also the selected municipality shall have a monitoring system to acute diarrheal diseases implemented. Samples will be collected from surface water and raw sewage, biweekly for 12 months for the following parameters: human enteric viruses, Giardia and Cryptosporidium, detection and viability of Ascaris eggs quantification of Salmonella. The techniques used for detection and enumeration of pathogens will be selected from both traditional and molecular techniques (PCR and Real-time PCR). The results of monitoring activities allied to available data from acute diarrheal diseases will be implemented in the tool AQRM. The results will be disseminated through scientific meetings or in the form of courses and training. The diagnosis of the studied system could serve as a model of quality assessment to be applied to other water producing systems. (AU)