Waterborne Disease Research Summaries Published

July/August, 2006
A special issue of the Journal of Water and Health was published in July/August 2006 to showcase a series of review articles on research supported by EPA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This research was mandated by the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996. The papers include authors from NHEERL's Human Studies Division and the Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water. The authors and researchers from CDC and EPA met in July of 2005 to identify data gaps and make recommendations for the next generation of health studies related to microbial exposures in drinking water. The results of that workshop are included in the publication.

The National Estimate Research was a natural extension of EPA's intramural research program and ongoing collaborations with CDC. The SDWA also mandated that EPA and CDC conduct five waterborne disease studies. EPA and CDC sponsored two workshops in 1998 and 1999 to develop a research plan for the National Estimate and Five Waterborne Disease Studies. The program involved both US and international scientists and was focused on endemic gastrointestinal illnesses associated with microbial drinking water exposures. The special issues involves over 30 authors from the United States and the United Kingdom and is the most comprehensive review of research conducted in the last 10 years.

The main purpose of the National Estimate papers is to review the state of the science, propose methodologies for estimating waterborne disease and the availability of data to make a National Estimate of Waterborne Disease.

The following files are PDF. About PDF

• Estimating the infectious disease risks associated with drinking water in the United States
  (PDF, 2 pp, 37 kb)
• Assessing waterborne risks: an introduction
  (PDF, 16 pp, 214 kb)
• Waterborne outbreaks reported in the United States
  (PDF, 12 pp, 158 kb)
• The rate of acute gastrointestinal illness in developed countries
  (PDF, 39 pp, 376 kb)
• A review of household drinking water intervention trials and an approach to the estimation of endemic waterborne gastroenteritis in the United States
  (PDF, 18 pp, 182 kb)
• Estimates of endemic waterborne risks from community-intervention studies
  (PDF, 11 pp, 133 kb)
• Observational epidemiologic studies of endemic waterborne risks: cohort, case-control, time-series, and ecologic studies
  (PDF, 19 pp, 213 kb)
• Towards a US national estimate of the risk of endemic waterborne disease - sero-epidemiologic studies
  (PDF, 43 pp, 564 kb)
• Use of microbial risk assessment to inform the national estimate of acute gastrointestinal illness attributable to microbes in drinking water
  (PDF, 22 pp, 291 kb)
• The role of disease burden measures in future estimates of endemic waterborne disease
  (PDF, 13 pp, 177 kb)
• An approach for developing a national estimate of waterborne disease due to drinking water and a national estimate model application
  (PDF, 40 pp, 384 kb)
• Workshop summary: estimating waterborne disease risks in the United States
  (PDF, 13 pp, 143 kb)