Posted in Boil Water Notice, Contaminated water, Cryptosporidiosis, Cryptosporidium, Food Micro Blog, Food Microbiology Blog, Food Microbiology Research, microbial contamination, Microbiological Risk Assessment, Microbiology, Microbiology Investigations, Research, Uncategorized, Water, water microbiology, Water Safety
A precautionary boil notice was earlier issued after E-coli was found at 443 postcodes
Tap water in thousands of Kent and Surrey homes has been deemed safe to drink following the lifting of a precautionary boil notice.
On Friday, SES water advised customers to boil all drinking water after the deadly E-coli bacteria was discovered during routine tests.
Teams were immediately called to restore the water supplies to their normal standards which has now been achieved.
Four towns on the South Coast of Massachusetts are under a boil water order after E. coli was detected in their water source.
The Mattapoisett River Valley Water District sent out the order on Wednesday, saying it was notified of the positive E. coli results in routine samples collected Tuesday, WCVB reported. The boil water order affects Mattapoisett, Fairhaven, Rochester, and Marion.
Per the order, any ice, drinks, formula, and uncooked foods prepared with water on or before Tuesday should be discarded, WCVB reported. The district has begun temporary chlorination of the water and will flush the system over the next few days. More samples will be collected Thursday, and residents will be informed when tests show no E. coli is present.
People in parts of Surrey are being told to boil their water before drinking it over fears it could contain E. coli.
Hundreds of postcodes in the Oxted area have been affected.
SES Water said an issue was discovered during routine tests, and “our teams are working to investigate the problem and restore supplies to their usual high standards”.
The scale of the contamination has not yet been confirmed.
The water company is awaiting further test results.
In the meantime people in the area are being told to boil all water and let it cool before using it for drinking, preparing food or cleaning their teeth.
Pets should also be given boiled tap water.
Boiled water can be kept in the fridge, and should be covered and used within 24 hours.
More than 1,200 water users in Valencia County have been asked to boil their water after E. coli bacteria was discovered in a routine sample.
These customers receive their water from Monterey Water Company. The New Mexico Environment Department instructed the utility to issue a boil water advisory on Oct. 2, according to a press release.
E. coli is commonly found in the intestines of both humans and other animals and NMED states that the bacteria’s presence in water indicates that it may have been in contact with sewage or animal waste.
A sample that tests positive for the bacteria can indicate the presence of dangerous strains of E. coli or other organisms that can cause water-borne illness, the press release states. Symptoms of water-borne illnesses include gastrointestinal problems and, in rare instances, these illnesses can be deadly. Sensitive populations including children, senior citizens and people with compromised immune systems have increased risk of contracting these illnesses.
When a boil water advisory is issued, the customers in the affected area are encouraged to boil their water for three minutes prior to drinking it or using it to make coffee, tea, other drinks or ice. The water should also be boiled before using it for cooking, washing fruits and vegetables or brushing teeth. Additionally, residents should boil the water before using it to prepare infant formula or to provide drinking water to pets.
The boil water advisory only affects customers who receive water from Monterey Water Company. Other surrounding areas are not impacted.
Boil water advisories usually last for a few days. For example, residents in the Lovington area were under a boil water advisory for approximately three days in January after E. coli was found in the Lovington Municipal Water Supply.
Monterey Water Company is a privately-owned water utility that has been serving customers in Valencia County since the 1980s. The company was formed to provide water to Monterey Mobile Home Estates and Monterey Park units two and three. These subdivisions are located southeast of Los Lunas.
The utility has two active wells that it uses for groundwater and does not use any surface water.
This is not the first time that E. coli has been detected in the Monterey Water Company’s system. According to the New Mexico Drinking Water Bureau’s Drinking Water Watch database, E. coli was also detected in 2020 and in 2014.
The New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH) reported this week four cases of Legionnaires’ disease in Hamilton Township, Mercer County between May-August 2021, along with an additional reported case from November 2020.
State and local health officials continue to work closely to investigate these cases as part of a larger investigation, which was initiated in August 2020 following a reported cluster of four cases.
Hamilton Township reported two deaths in August 2020 and an additional death was reported late last month in an elderly township resident among the nine reported cases.
Legionnaires’ disease is a type of pneumonia that people can get after breathing in aerosolized water (small droplets of water in the air) containing Legionella bacteria. Symptoms of Legionnaires’ disease include cough, shortness of breath, fever, muscle aches, and headaches which are similar to symptoms caused by other respiratory infections, including COVID-19.
Posted in Contaminated water, food bourne outbreak, Food Micro Blog, Food Microbiology Blog, foodborne outbreak, foodbourne outbreak, Legionella, Legionnaires’ disease, microbial contamination, Microbiological Risk Assessment, Microbiology, Microbiology Investigations, outbreak, Water, water microbiology, Water Safety
More than 50 people are ill in Ireland after a failure at a treatment plant led to contaminated water being released to the public.
The Health and Service Executive (HSE) is investigating an outbreak in the town of Gorey in North Wexford. There have been 52 confirmed illnesses linked to the incident, including cases of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), with a number of hospitalizations.
At Gorey water treatment plant in County Wexford, there was a power outage and a chlorine pump failure resulting in water leaving the plant and entering the public supply without the appropriate level of disinfection for five days beginning Aug. 19. This incident was not reported to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and HSE until Aug. 26.
Authorities said the delay in reporting prevented a timely risk assessment of the impact on drinking water quality and time to allow measures that could have protected public health.
EPA conducted two audits at Gorey water treatment plant on Sept. 7 and 16 to investigate the incident and to identify what corrective actions needed to be taken.
Posted in Contaminated water, E.coli, escherichia coli, Food Micro Blog, Food Microbiology, Food Microbiology Blog, Food Microbiology Testing, microbial contamination, Microbiological Risk Assessment, Microbiology, Microbiology Investigations, STEC, STEC E.coli, Water, water microbiology, Water Safety
Waterborne disease outbreaks (WBDO) are still a public health issue worldwide [1–3]. They are generally caused by the microbiological contamination of tap water, and acute gastroenteritis (AGE) is the most common syndrome in affected people. Faced with this issue, many countries have implemented dedicated surveillance systems [1,3–5]. However, notification processes (voluntary or mandatory) vary, as do definitions for WBDO. Standardised information is collected including epidemiological, clinical and, occasionally, biological data, as well as data on the drinking water supply zone (WSZ) in question and operating and distribution incidents. A WSZ refers to a geographically defined area within which water intended for human consumption comes from one or more sources, and where water quality may be considered as approximately uniform. Although most surveillance systems are affected by under detection, assessments all tend to highlight the same risk factors: rainy events leading to pollution and flooding of the water resource, microbiological vulnerability of the resource, operating incidents (disinfection failure, filtration incident) or a distribution incident (pipeline break, backflow of waste water to the drinking water supply) [6]. Moreover, contributing environmental factors may be aggravated by climate change, thereby increasing the health burden attributable to tap water [7,8].
In France, health authorities notify WBDO to Santé publique France (SpFrance, the French Public Health Agency). SpFrance then investigates the reported issue [9–12]. There is no standard declaration procedure for reporting WBDO. They are usually notified to health authorities through voluntary reporting by general practitioners or pharmacists following official drinking water monitoring results, or following consumer complaints (smell, taste, etc). Rarely, WBDO are also notified through the Food-borne Infectious Outbreak (FIO) mandatory surveillance system, which is also managed by SpFrance. The lack of a specific WBDO surveillance system leads to underestimation of their health impact. Studies based on improving sensitivity, by using health insurance data to record medicalised acute gastroenteritis (mAGE) cases, have proven both their utility in the study of infectious risk attributable to tap water, and their applicability in retrospective WBDO detection systems [13–16].
In this context, SpFrance, in partnership with the Ministry of Health and regional health agencies (ARS), designed a national French WBDO surveillance system based on health insurance data. The 3-year start-up period to test the system commenced in April 2019. Its main objectives are (i) to facilitate the identification and management of WSZ that need to be secured and made safe to protect consumers’ health and (ii) to improve contamination prevention through increased knowledge of WBDO in France and associated risk factors. Furthermore, this new system will provide epidemiological indicators to better estimate the health impact of WBDO.
This article presents the structure and organisation of this new French WBDO surveillance system. We focus on the web-based application EpiGEH, which was specially developed for the system by SpFrance.
In rural Ethiopia, where people often share their homes with their livestock, infections of humans and animals with Cryptosporidium and Giardia are relatively common. One possible transmission route is consumption of contaminated fresh produce; this study investigated the occurrence of Cryptosporidium and Giardia in fresh produce in four districts of rural Tigray in Ethiopia. Fresh produce samples (n = 55) were analysed using standard laboratory procedures. Overall, 15% (8/55) of samples were found to be contaminated. Although contamination levels were mostly low, a few samples had high numbers of Giardia cysts (up to around 70 cysts per 30 g sample). Molecular analyses were largely unsuccessful, but Giardia Assemblage A was identified in one sample. Contamination with these parasites was identified in two of the four districts, but, although a similar pattern has already been described for water contamination, this may be at least partially explained by sampling bias. Nevertheless, we speculate that access to clean water sources may be an important factor for reducing the occurrence of these pathogens. Given the public health and veterinary burden associated with both parasites, the factors which are of importance for their circulation in the communities and environments deserve further investigation. View Full-Text
Posted in Boil Water Notice, Bore Hole Water, Contaminated water, Cryptosporidiosis, Cryptosporidium, Food Micro Blog, Food Microbiology Blog, Food Microbiology Research, Giardia, microbial contamination, Microbiological Risk Assessment, Microbiology, Microbiology Investigations, Research, Water, water microbiology, Water Safety
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