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Health impact assessment of wastewater reuse for replenishing an urban landscape lake by disability-adjusted life year
- Source :
- Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination. 6:371-381
- Publication Year :
- 2015
- Publisher :
- IWA Publishing, 2015.
-
Abstract
- Wastewater reuse for landscape water replenishment has raised severe public concerns over potential health hazards. Thus, this study aims to quantify the health impacts due to the replenishment of Lake Cui in Kunming with reclaimed water. Based on experimental analyses, Escherichia coli and norovirus were determined as the major pathogens in Lake Cui. Three typical exposure routes, namely river cleaning, boating and road flushing were identified during a field investigation. The disease burden, expressed by disability-adjusted life year (DALY) was evaluated and compared with the infection risk obtained by quantitative microbial risk assessment. Findings showed that the disease burden due to road flushing was highest compared to the other pathways. For the different pathogens, E. coli was the leading cause of DALYs. As well, infection risk for the two pathogens exceeded the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) risk level of 10−4, while the disease burdens were below the WHO threshold of 10−6 DALYs. Thus, infection risk should not be regarded as the endpoint for health impact assessment. By contrast, the disease burden is much more suitable for quantifying the health hazard due to environmental pollution. The methodology introduced in this study provides new directions for the evaluation of health impacts related to water reuse for landscape ecology.
- Subjects :
- Environmental engineering
Filtration and Separation
Environmental pollution
Disease
010501 environmental sciences
Reuse
01 natural sciences
Reclaimed water
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Environmental health
Environmental science
Disability-adjusted life year
030212 general & internal medicine
Landscape ecology
Health impact assessment
Disease burden
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Water Science and Technology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 24089370 and 22201319
- Volume :
- 6
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........401a8eeebb09d7469d6940c234747072