Efficacy of virus detection and elimination in natural waters and sediments - laboratory and technical scale investigations

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Public health protection against human pathogenic viruses in water needs more efficient virus enrichment techniques and sensitive detection methods as well as an understanding of virus transport and attenuation in aquatic systems. This proposed project will develop and improve methods for the enrichment and subsequent detection of human pathogenic viruses (e.g. adenoviruses, noroviruses, enteroviruses, rotaviruses) as well as bacteriophages (coliphages) in water samples. Moreover, as a first step towards molecular virus monitoring, it will test the potential of adenoviruses and noroviruses in two roles: (i) as putative indicator viruses reporting the presence of human pathogenic viruses and (ii) as reference viruses for investigating the efficiency of virus removal. The project will then combine the reality check of the new methods with investigations of viral transport and attenuation in waters and sediments in technical-scale experiments, many of which will be conducted in collaboration with partners from the consortium. Our own laboratory (batch and column) and semi-technical-scale experiments will address mechanisms responsible for virus mobilization and transport in the subsurface, with a focus on colloidal transport and the phenomenon of 'preferential flow'. By investigating keystone conditions, we aim to derive a set of parameters to determine a basis for estimating the risk of virus transport.