Laboratory for Infectious Disease and the Environment
Publications
Sources and risk factors for nitrate, pathogens, and fecal contamination of private wells in rural southwestern Wisconsin, USA Sources and risk factors for nitrate, pathogens, and fecal contamination of private wells in rural southwestern Wisconsin, USA
Household well water can be degraded by contaminants from the land's surface, but private well owners lack means to protect the source water from neighboring disturbances. Rural residents of southwestern Wisconsin, USA, rely on private well water, and the combination of land use and fractured carbonate bedrock makes groundwater vulnerable to contamination. To identify the extent, sources...
Quantitative microbial risk assessment with microbial source tracking for mixed fecal sources contaminating recreational river waters, Iowa, USA Quantitative microbial risk assessment with microbial source tracking for mixed fecal sources contaminating recreational river waters, Iowa, USA
Fecal contamination of surface water can cause acute gastrointestinal illness (AGI) among recreators. AGI risk varies among human, livestock, and wildlife fecal sources, but the prevalence of individual sources is unknown for most recreational sites. We estimated AGI risk for six sites near Des Moines, Iowa, using quantitative microbial risk assessment combined with microbial source...
Two risk assessments: Evaluating the use of indicator HF183 Bacteroides versus pathogen measurements for modelling recreational illness risks in an urban watershed Two risk assessments: Evaluating the use of indicator HF183 Bacteroides versus pathogen measurements for modelling recreational illness risks in an urban watershed
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of HF183 Bacteroides for estimating pathogen exposures during recreational water activities. We compared the use of Bacteroides-based exposure assessment to exposure assessment that relied on pathogen measurements. We considered two types of recreational water sites: those impacted by combined sewer overflows (CSOs) and those not...