Robert B. Annis Water Resources Institute, 740 West Shoreline Dr, Muskegon, MI, 49441, USA.
Department of Chemistry, Oakland University, 146 Library Dr., Rochester, MI, 48309, USA.
Environ Manage. 2024 Feb;73(2):443-456. doi: 10.1007/s00267-023-01878-x. Epub 2023 Sep 2.
Fecal pollution of surface water is a pervasive problem that negatively affects waterbodies concerning both public health and ecological functions. Current assessment methods monitor fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) to identify pollution sources using culture-based quantification and microbial source tracking (MST). These types of information assist stakeholders in identifying likely sources of fecal pollution, prioritizing them for remediation, and choosing appropriate best management practices. While both culture-based quantification and MST are useful, they yield different kinds of information, potentially increasing uncertainty in prioritizing sources for management. This study presents a conceptual framework that takes separate human health risk estimates based on measured MST and E. coli concentrations as inputs and produces an estimate of the overall fecal impairment risk as its output. The proposed framework is intended to serve as a supplemental screening tool for existing monitoring programs to aid in identifying and prioritizing sites for remediation. In this study, we evaluated the framework by applying it to two primarily agricultural watersheds and several freshwater recreational beaches using existing routine monitoring data. Based on a combination of E. coli and MST results, the proposed fecal impairment framework identified four sites in the watersheds as candidates for remediation and identified temporal trends in the beach application. As these case studies demonstrate, the proposed fecal impairment framework is an easy-to-use and cost-effective supplemental screening tool that provides actionable information to managers using existing routine monitoring data, without requiring specialized expertize.
地表水污染是一个普遍存在的问题，会对公共健康和生态功能造成负面影响。目前的评估方法通过基于培养的定量和微生物源追踪（MST）来监测粪便指示菌（FIB），以识别污染源。这些信息可以帮助利益相关者识别可能的粪便污染源，对其进行优先排序，并选择适当的最佳管理实践。虽然基于培养的定量和 MST 都很有用，但它们提供了不同类型的信息，这可能会增加管理源优先级的不确定性。本研究提出了一个概念框架，该框架将基于测量的 MST 和大肠杆菌浓度的单独人类健康风险估计作为输入，并将其输出作为总体粪便损害风险的估计。该框架旨在作为现有监测计划的补充筛选工具，以帮助识别和优先考虑修复的地点。在这项研究中，我们通过应用现有的常规监测数据来评估该框架在两个主要农业流域和几个淡水娱乐海滩上的应用。根据大肠杆菌和 MST 结果的组合，所提出的粪便损害框架确定了流域中的四个地点作为修复的候选者，并确定了海滩应用中的时间趋势。正如这些案例研究所示，所提出的粪便损害框架是一种易于使用且具有成本效益的补充筛选工具，它使用现有的常规监测数据为管理者提供可操作的信息，而无需专门的专业知识。
