Recreational microbes: indicators for monitoring water quality

在污水中发现的微生物水质指标浓度很高，因此可用来确定水体对于娱乐用途是否安全。最近，人们对适当使用微生物指示剂来管理水体的娱乐用途提出了关切。对于位于亚热带环境中的水体尤其如此，因为微生物在亚热带有可能重新生长，而且用于制定国家准则的研究并不是在亚热带环境中进行的。这项拟议的研究的主要目标是评估人类健康与身体和健康之间的关系 近岸水体及其岸线的微生物特征。为实现这一目标，将在亚热带气候下测量休闲海滩场地对人体健康的影响和微生物水质，并开发可用于区分污水来源和微生物再生长的影响的可预测的水动力和微生物命运模型，这些来源中的每一种都可能导致在海滩场地观察到的不同健康影响。已经为这项研究选择的亚热带研究地点收集了大量的试点数据。这些试点数据以及文献表明，暴露在受污染的休闲海水中可能会对人类健康造成影响，海岸线沉积物可能是指示微生物的来源之一。在拟议的项目中，将通过流行病学研究对人类健康进行评估，该研究将随机分配暴露在水或海滩中，进行协调的个人环境采样，并反复跟踪报告的对人类健康的影响。水质将通过两套环境测量进行评估。环境评估的第一阶段将侧重于确定分布和 研究地点内肠球菌(目前联邦推荐的指示微生物)的来源。将通过密集的努力对肠球菌进行监测，以确定来源，特别是海岸线来源，以及与悬浮沉积物浓度的相关性。从这一密集抽样工作中收集的数据将用于开发肠球菌命运模型的源函数，以便与为该区域开发的水动力海洋模型相结合。耦合肠球菌模型将以预测性的方式使用，以确定流行病学研究应在研究海滩内的何时何地进行。环境测量的第二阶段将侧重于分析与参与者参与流行病学研究的时间一致的多种微生物。微生物检测将包括传统微生物指标(肠球菌、大肠杆菌、粪大肠菌群)和非传统微生物指标(产气荚膜梭菌、噬菌体)，以及微生物病原体(金黄色葡萄球菌、肠道病毒、诺沃克病毒、甲型肝炎、微小葡萄球菌和革兰氏菌)的直接检测。对病毒和原生动物病原体的分析将包括传统的PCR，结果将与新的Luminex技术进行交叉验证。本研究的一个主要目标是开发一种快速(当天)、准确、高通量和灵敏的分子检测方法，用于鉴定海洋和淡水环境中的病原微生物。遥感核心和基因组核心将参与这项拟议的跨学科协作研究。来自流体力学和微生物命运耦合模型的结果将与病原体和 人类健康数据，用于预测海滩因健康危害而关闭。最终，人类、环境和海洋数据将被用来开发一个对亚热带海滩具有广泛适用性的预测模型，并根据当地情况进行适当的修改。最终结果将是改善亚热带海洋环境中的娱乐水质监测，并增加公众对微生物水质监测和模拟结果的信心。

Microbial water quality indicators are found in high concentrations in sewage, and are thus used to determine whether or not a water body is safe for recreational purposes. Recently, concerns have been raised about the appropriate use of microbial indicators to regulate recreational uses of water bodies. This is particularly true for water bodies located in sub/tropical environments, due to the potential for microbial regrowth in sub/tropics, and the fact that studies used to set national guidelines were not conducted in sub/tropical environments. The primary goal of this proposed study is to evaluate the relationship between human health, and the physical and microbial characteristics of a coastal water and its shoreline. This goal will be addressed by measuring human health effects and microbial water quality at a recreational beach site within a sub/tropical climate, and by developing a predictive, coupled hydrodynamic and microbial fate model that can be used to distinguish impacts from sewage sources versus regrowth of microbes, each of these sources possibly resulting in different health effects as observed at the beach site. Substantial pilot data have been collected for the sub/tropical study site chosen for this research. These pilot data, as well as the literature, indicate that exposure to contaminated recreational marine waters may result in human health effects, and that the shoreline sediments is one likely source of indicator microbes. Human health will be evaluated in the proposed project through an epidemiologic study which will randomly assign exposure to water or beach with coordinated individual environmental sampling and repeated follow up of reported human health effects. Water quality will be evaluated through two sets of environmental measurements. The first phase of the environmental assessment will focus on identifying the distribution and sources of enterococci (the current federally recommended indicator microbe) within the study site. Enterococci will be monitored through an intensive effort aimed at identifying sources, in particular shoreline sources, and correlations with suspended sediment concentrations. The data gathered from this intensive sampling effort will be used to develop source functions for an enterococci fate model to be coupled with a hydrodynamic oceanographic model developed for the area. The coupled enterococci model will be used in a predictive fashion to determine when and where within the study beach the epidemiologic study should take place. The second phase of environmental measurements will focus on the analysis of multiple microbes coincident with times that participants participate in the epidemiologic study. Microbe measurements will include traditional (enterococci, E. coli, fecal coliform) and non-traditional (C. perfringens, coliphage) microbial indicators, as well as direct measurement of microbial pathogens (S. aureus, enterovirus, Norwalk virus, hepatitis A, C. parvum, and G. lamblia). Analysis of the viral and protozoan pathogens will include traditional PCR and results will be cross-checked against new Luminex technology. A primary goal of this research is to develop a rapid (same day), accurate high throughput and sensitive molecular test for the identification of pathogenic microorganisms in marine and freshwater environments. The Remote Sensing Core and the Genomics Core will participate in this proposed interdisciplinary collaborative research study. The results from the coupled hydrodynamic and microbial fate model will be compared with the pathogen and human health data for the purposes of predicting beach closures due to health hazards. Ultimately, the human, environmental and oceanographic data will be used to develop a predictive model with broad applicability to beaches in the sub/tropics with appropriate modifications for local conditions. The final result will be the improvement of recreational water quality monitoring in the sub/tropical marine environment, and an increase in public confidence in the results from microbial water quality monitoring and modeling.