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Drinking water turbidity and emergency department visits for gastrointestinal illness in Atlanta, 1993–2004

Abstract

The extent to which drinking water turbidity measurements indicate the risk of gastrointestinal illness is not well understood. Despite major advances in drinking water treatment and delivery, infectious disease can still be transmitted through drinking water in the United States, and it is important to have reliable indicators of microbial water quality to inform public health decisions. The objective of our study was to assess the relationship between gastrointestinal illness, quantified through emergency department visits, and drinking water quality, quantified as raw water and filtered water turbidity measured at the treatment plant. We examined the relationship between turbidity levels of raw and filtered surface water measured at eight major drinking water treatment plants in the metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia, and over 240,000 emergency department visits for gastrointestinal illness during 1993–2004 among the population served by these plants. We fit Poisson time-series statistical regression models that included turbidity in a 21-day distributed lag and that controlled for meteorological factors and long-term time trends. For filtered water turbidity, the results were consistent with no association with emergency department visits for gastrointestinal illness. We observed a modest association between raw water turbidity and emergency department visits for gastrointestinal illness. Our results suggest that source water quality may contribute modestly to endemic gastrointestinal illness in the study area. The association between turbidity and emergency department visits for gastrointestinal illness was only observed when raw water turbidity was considered; filtered water turbidity may not serve as a reliable indicator of modest pathogen risk at all treatment plants.

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Acknowledgements

This project was supported by a grant from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (R831629) and emergency department data collection was supported by grants from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (R01ES011294), EPA (R82921301-0), and Electric Power Research Institute (W03253-07). We are grateful to the participating drinking water utilities and hospitals, whose staff members devoted many hours of time to the study as a public service. The authors thank Dr. Caryn Bern for her assistance on the project.

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Correspondence to Sarah C Tinker.

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Tinker, S., Moe, C., Klein, M. et al. Drinking water turbidity and emergency department visits for gastrointestinal illness in Atlanta, 1993–2004. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol 20, 19–28 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/jes.2008.68

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