Diarrhoeal health risks attributable to water-borne-pathogens in arsenic-mitigated drinking water in West Bengal are largely independent of the microbiological quality of the supplied water

Mondal, D ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5144-626X, Ganguli, B, Sen Roy, S, Halder, B, Banerjee, N, Banerjee, M, Samanta, M, Giri, A and Polya, D 2014, 'Diarrhoeal health risks attributable to water-borne-pathogens in arsenic-mitigated drinking water in West Bengal are largely independent of the microbiological quality of the supplied water' , Water, 6 (5) , pp. 1100-1117.

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Abstract

Abstract: There is a growing discussion about the possibility of arsenic mitigation measures in Bengal and similar areas leading to undesirable substitution of water-borne-pathogen attributable risks pathogens for risks attributable to arsenic, in part because of uncertainties in relative pathogen concentrations in supplied and end-use water. We try to resolve this discussion, by assessing the relative contributions of water supply and end-user practices to water-borne-pathogen-attributable risks for arsenic mitigation options in a groundwater arsenic impacted area of West Bengal. Paired supplied arsenic-mitigated water and end-use drinking water samples from 102 households were collected and analyzed for arsenic and thermally tolerant coliforms [TTC], used as a proxy for microbiological water quality, We then estimated the DALYs related to key sequelae, diarrheal diseases and cancers, arising from water-borne pathogens and arsenic respectively. We found [TTC] in end-use drinking water to depend only weakly on [TTC] in source-water. End-user practices far outweighed the microbiological quality of supplied water in determining diarrheal disease burden. [TTC] in source water was calculated to contribute <1% of total diarrheal disease burden. No substantial demonstrable pathogen-for-arsenic risk substitution attributable to specific arsenic mitigation of supplied waters was observed, illustrating the benefits of arsenic mitigation measures in the area studied.

Item Type:	Article
Themes:	Health and Wellbeing
Schools:	Schools > School of Environment and Life Sciences > Ecosystems and Environment Research Centre
Journal or Publication Title:	Water
Publisher:	MDPI
Refereed:	Yes
ISSN:	2073-4441
Related URLs:	Publication
Funders:	British Council United Kingdom Education and Research Initaitive (UKIERI), Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India (CSIR)
Depositing User:	Dr Debapriya Mondal
Date Deposited:	22 Jan 2015 16:20
Last Modified:	08 Nov 2019 11:15
URI:	http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/33392

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