Health Risk Assessment of Urban Surface Waters Based on Real-Time PCR Detection of Typical Pathogens

ABSTRACT

Typical enteric pathogens including enteroviruses, Salmonella typhi, Shigella spp., and Eschierichia coli were selected and monitored during a 1-year period in urban surface waters using the real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. By considering two routes of human exposure to urban surface waters (i.e., drinking water and involuntary intake), and supposing that the dose–response relation may follow either an exponential model or the Beta-Poisson model, health risk assessment was conducted to estimate the safety under a given acceptable risk level upon exposure to each water and to evaluate the required level of pathogen inactivation for safeguarding human health. As a result, it was found that human health risk due to enteroviruses is often greater than that due to bacterial pathogens, and greater removal of enteroviruses would be required for safeguarding at the same acceptable risk level.

Key Words:

• bacterial pathogens
• enteroviruses
• exposure
• health risk assessment
• urban surface waters

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (PCSIRT) (Grant No. IRT0853), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 50838005), China postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 20100470086) and Scientific Research Program Funded by Shaanxi Provincial Education Department (Program No.11JK0765).