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fact they play many positive roles as primary producers in oceans and fresh waters. They are among Earth’s oldest life forms, and more than two billion years ago helped produce much of the oxygen that made much other life on Earth possible, including humans. But various strains of them have likely always been toxic.
Scientists said a concern is that nutrient over-enrichment may select for the more toxic populations of these bacteria, creating a positive feedback loop that makes the problem even worse.
Researchers said in their analysis that modern water treatment does a reasonably good job of making drinking water safe, but the lack of required or widespread monitoring remains a problem. No one should drink untreated surface water that may be contaminated by cyanobacteria, and another serious concern is recreational exposure through swimming or other water sports.
Cyanobacteria-associated illnesses are not required to be reported under the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines, as most pathogens are. This makes accurate assessments of the incidence and severity of adverse health outcomes difficult to determine.
A recent study identified 11 freshwater lake, algal-bloom associated disease outbreaks, and 61 illnesses from 2009-10, based on reports from New York, Ohio, and Washington. The most common symptoms were skin rashes and gastroenteritis. There were no fatalities.
Many large, eutrophic lakes such as Lake Erie are plagued each year by algal blooms so massive that they are visible from outer space. Dogs have died from drinking contaminated water, and sea otter deaths in Monterey Bay have been
attributed to them eating shellfish contaminated with microcystin that came from an inland lake.
Until better monitoring standards are in place, the researchers note, an unfortunate indicator of toxic algal bloom events will be illness or death among pets, livestock and wild animals that drink contaminated water.
One cannot tell visually if an algal bloom will be toxic or not, Otten said, and traditional microscopic cell counting and other approaches to assess risk are too slow for making time-sensitive, public health decisions. But the future holds promise. New DNA-based techniques can be used by experts to estimate health risks faster and cheaper than traditional methods.
Cyanobacterial toxins are not destroyed by boiling. However, individuals concerned about the safety of their drinking water may use regularly-changed point-of-use carbon filtration devices that are effective in reducing these health risks.
People should also develop an awareness of what cyanobacteria look like, in a natural setting appearing as green, paint-like surface scums. They should avoid water recreation on a lake or river that has these characteristics, researchers said.
Hampshire water management project could annually save UK 80 million litres or 320,000 Olympic swimming pools of
precious drinking water It’s the summer and that means Wimbledon, Pimms and the hosepipe ban! With the wettest start to the year on record the hosepipe ban is still inevitable as in the UK we are pretty poor at managing our water resource. What is needed is a step change in thinking and whilst recycling, sustainability and water management practices are getting better there is still room for improvement.
One Hampshire based civil engineering company recently completed a project that did just that. Whilst the objective was to divert road sweepings and gully waste from landfill, recycling 90% of all material into topsoil for the highways, the technology recycled 1,500,000 litres of water saving the same volume of valuable mains drinking water being used for highway gully cleaning.
2012 EU regulations dictates it is no longer acceptable to send road sweepings and gulley waste to landfill due to the potential high levels of hydro carbons, contaminants and impurities. Hampshire based R&W Civil Engineering was transporting road sweepings and gully waste from Hampshire to the nearest approved processing station in Dartford, Kent; a round trip of over 180 excruciating miles, resulting in shorter working shifts, long night journeys and
follow us on twitter @draintrader reduced productivity.
Faced with significant environmental and logistical challenges R&W built its own waste transfer station at Hursley in Hampshire. High volumes of contaminated water within the waste matter needed to be disposed of but the location of the proposed treatment plant had no foul sewer connection. The project developed an effective water management and purification strategy in order to solve a greater recycling issue: Now the project recycles 1.5 million litres of water from gully waste, which is reused by gulley suckers and road sweepers and diverts 1.5 million litres of mains drinking from use in jetting highway drains.
If each UK County adopted this approach it would equate to 80 million litres or 320,000 Olympic sized swimming pools of drinking water saved EACH YEAR!
| September 2015 | drain TRADER 37
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