Water quality and health in northern Canada: stored drinking water and acute gastrointestinal illness in Labrador Inuit

One of the highest self-reported incidence rates of acute gastrointestinal illness (AGI) in the global peer-reviewed literature occurs in Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic. This high incidence of illness could be due, in part, to the consumption of contaminated water, as many northern communities face challenges related to the quality of municipal drinking water. Furthermore, many Inuit store drinking water in containers in the home, which could increase the risk of contamination between source and point-of-use (i.e., water recontamination during storage). To examine this risk, this research characterized drinking water collection and storage practices, identified potential risk factors for water contamination between source and point-of-use, and examined possible associations between drinking water contamination and self-reported AGI in the Inuit community of Rigolet, Canada. The study included a cross-sectional census survey that captured data on types of drinking water used, household practices related to drinking water (e.g., how it was collected and stored), physical characteristics of water storage containers, and self-reported AGI. Additionally, water samples were collected from all identified drinking water containers in homes and analyzed for presence of Escherichia coli and total coliforms. Despite municipally treated tap water being available in all homes, 77.6% of households had alternative sources of drinking water stored in containers, and of these containers, 25.2% tested positive for total coliforms. The use of transfer devices and water dippers (i.e., smaller bowls or measuring cups) for the collection and retrieval of water from containers were both significantly associated with increased odds of total coliform presence in stored water (OR_{transfer device} = 3.4, 95% CI 1.2–11.7; OR_dipper = 13.4, 95% CI 3.8–47.1). Twenty-eight-day period prevalence of self-reported AGI during the month before the survey was 17.2% (95% CI 13.0–22.5), which yielded an annual incidence rate of 2.4 cases per person per year (95% CI 1.8–3.1); no water-related risk factors were significantly associated with AGI. Considering the high prevalence of, and risk factors associated with, indicator bacteria in drinking water stored in containers, potential exposure to waterborne pathogens may be minimized through interventions at the household level.     

Systems approaches to integrated solid waste management in developing countries

Solid waste management (SWM) has become an issue of increasing global concern as urban populations continue to rise and consumption patterns change. The health and environmental implications associated with SWM are mounting in urgency, particularly in the context of developing countries. While systems analyses largely targeting well-defined, engineered systems have been used to help SWM agencies in industrialized countries since the 1960s, collection and removal dominate the SWM sector in developing countries. This review contrasts the history and current paradigms of SWM practices and policies in industrialized countries with the current challenges and complexities faced in developing country SWM. In industrialized countries, public health, environment, resource scarcity, climate change, and public awareness and participation have acted as SWM drivers towards the current paradigm of integrated SWM. However, urbanization, inequality, and economic growth; cultural and socio-economic aspects; policy, governance, and institutional issues; and international influences have complicated SWM in developing countries. This has limited the applicability of approaches that were successful along the SWM development trajectories of industrialized countries. This review demonstrates the importance of founding new SWM approaches for developing country contexts in post-normal science and complex, adaptive systems thinking.     

Overcoming the toxicity effects of municipal wastewater sludge and biosolid extracts in the Yeast Estrogen Screen (YES) assay

For nearly two decades, the Yeast Estrogen Screen (YES) has been used as a valuable tool for determining the total estrogenic potency of various environmental samples, including influent and effluent streams at municipal wastewater plants. However, applying the YES assay to wastewater sludges and stabilized biosolids has been problematic. This is due to co-extracted compounds from the solids either proving toxic to the yeast or masking the presence of estrogenic substances. The present research describes the development and validation of sample preparation steps that mitigate the toxicity effects of municipal wastewater sludge and biosolid samples in the YES assay, while allowing for reliable dose-dependent expression of estrogenic activity. A copper work-up for sulfur removal and chromatographic cleanup with silica and alumina were required in addition to solid-phase extraction to adequately remove interfering compounds. Sample stabilization methods such as autoclaving, lyophilization and formaldehyde treatment were found to be detrimental to the assay. Hence, heat-drying is recommended to prevent cytotoxicity and the degradation of estrogenic substances.     

Strategic Management Decision Support System: An Analysis of the Environmental Policy Issues

In this paper we present a new approach for modeling environmental problem as a bilevel programming problem. To the authors best knowledge, this is the first attempt to use bilivel techniques to tackle such problems. We derive at solution to help decision makers to cope with environmental policy issues. San Francisco, Bay Area is used as a real world example with the solution to their environmental problem.California is presently faced with a serious deficit of solid waste treatment and disposal facilities. Federal legislation has sought to compel the States to assure the capacity to treat and dispose of their own wastes and the California Legislature has enacted laws requiring the counties to initiate programs so that they can treat and dispose of their own wastes. Neither the federal nor the State programs have met with success in California. California continues to ship greater and greater amounts of waste out-of-state, and the majority of California counties have not instituted plans acceptable to the State government regarding the treatment and disposal of their own wastes.In the few cases where sitting and licensing programs have been proposed, the policy-makers charged with their evaluation have proceeded with largely intuitive, non-quantitative evaluation of policy options, often ignoring most of the financial and environmental implication of their decisions.We have developed a strategic management decision model that can evaluate multiple solid waste management options from both economic and environmental standpoints. Examples of problems a quantitative model might evaluate include the economic and environmental impacts of multiple treatment or disposal facilities as opposed to only one site; the environmental impact of taxing dirty waste streams, thus encouraging waste treatment and/or minimization on-site; and the social risk resulting from transportation risks assuming one or more multiple treatment or disposal sites or the use of alternative transportation routes.Because of extensive information presently available for the San Francisco Bay region, we have investigated the regional waste management problem there under several different treatment and disposal scenarios. As appropriate, results from this regional model and from authors earlier work [1] will be applied to California as a whole.