Application of QMRA to MAR operations for safe agricultural water reuses in coastal areas

Abstract

A pathogenic Escherichia coli ( E.coli ) O157:H7 and O26:H11 dose-response model was set up for a quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) of the waterborne diseases associated with managed aquifer recharge (MAR) practices in semiarid regions. The MAR facility at Forcatella (Southern Italy) was selected for the QMRA application. The target counts of pathogens incidentally exposed to hosts by eating contaminated raw crops or while bathing at beaches of the coastal area were determined by applying the Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) Bayesian method to the water sampling results. The MCMC provided the most probable pathogen count reaching the target and allowed for the minimization of the number of water samplings, and hence, reducing the associated costs. The sampling stations along the coast were positioned based on the results of a groundwater flow and pathogen transport model, which highlighted the preferential flow pathways of the transported E. coli in the fractured coastal aquifer. QMRA indicated tolerable (<10 −6 DALY) health risks for bathing at beaches and irrigation with wastewater, with 0.4 infectious diseases per year (11.4% probability of occurrence) associated with the reuse of reclaimed water via soil irrigation even though exceeding the E. coli regulation limit of 10 CFU/100 mL by five times. The results show negligible health risk and insignificant impacts on the coastal water quality due to pathogenic E. coli in the wastewater used for MAR. However, droughts and reclaimed water quality can be considered the main issues of MAR practices in semiarid regions suggesting additional reclaimed water treatments and further stress-tests via QMRAs by considering more persistent pathogens than E. coli .

Increasing Water System Robustness in the Netherlands: Potential of Cross-Sectoral Water Reuse

“…Several academic risk assessments have been published (e.g. Delli Compagni et al 2020;Masciopinto et al 2020), while formal guidelines are pending. Specific issues to consider include the potential impact of recirculation and accumulation of substances that are not removed in treatment and the potential formation of toxic transformation products (WHO 2006;Schindler Wildhaber et al 2015).…”

Waterborne Virus Transport and Risk Assessment in Lake Geneva Under Climate Change

“…Among all the waterborne viruses, several are classified to have a moderate to high health significance, including adenovirus, enterovirus, norovirus and rotavirus (WHO, 2011). Some previous studies have combined water quality simulations with quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) to assess risks posed by waterborne pathogens in varies aquatic systems, such as urban water systems (Sokolova et al., 2015), drinking water distribution system (Blokker et al., 2014), rivers (Schijven et al., 2015), agricultural water system in coastal area (Masciopinto et al., 2020) and estuaries (Foreman et al., 2015). However, most of these studies analyzed past events or simulate scenarios under current conditions while future climate conditions are not taken into consideration.…”

Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, and Dependability analysis of Tube-wells Integrated with Underground Pipelines in agricultural fields for irrigation

“…Darvini et al 13 carried out the performance estimation of water distribution systems by incorporating the leakage and temporal variability of water demand. Masciopinto et al 14 discovered the applications of quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) for safe agricultural water reuses in coastal areas. Elshaboury et al 15 adopted a minimal cut set approach for the reliability estimation of water distribution networks.…”