RAPID: Timely Assessment of Water Quality to Reveal the Potential Ecological and Health Impact of Hurricanes at Puerto Rico

波多黎各的背靠背飓风导致岛上的大部分污水处理基础设施无法运行。结果，未经处理的污水和其他污染物被排放到沿海沃茨、溪流和河流中。要了解飓风等灾难性事件对配水系统的影响，需要在事件发生后立即进行快速数据采集。该项目的目标是提供水质毒性数据，以评估波多黎各饮用水供应和地表水的恢复过程。这将使用研究团队开发的新型最先进的毒性试验来完成。这项研究的结果将提供一个独一无二的机会来量化恢复过程中对公共卫生的风险。这项研究将应用下一代毒理基因组学支持的体外检测方法，以及时和提供信息的水质监测，再加上菌株解析的宏基因组数据，以确定源自微生物病原体宿主存在的风险。这些结果有可能导致水修复功效评估的范式转变，从旧的方法，经常遭受偏见和有限的化学和微生物信息。这将提供及时和有用的信息，以促进遏制和应对战略的制定，并帮助告知公众和政府与最近的极端天气事件相关的任何潜在的生态和健康影响。

CBET - 1810769 Gu, AprilBack-to-back hurricanes in Puerto Rico have caused much of the sewage treatment infrastructure on the island to be non-operational. As a result, raw sewage and other contaminants have been released into coastal waters, streams, and rivers. Understanding the impact of catastrophic events like hurricanes on water distribution systems requires rapid data acquisition soon after the event. The goal of this project is to provide water quality toxicity data to assess the recovery process in Puerto Rico's drinking water supply and surface water. This will be done using novel state-of-the-art toxicity assays developed by the research team. The results of this research will provide a one-of-a-kind opportunity to quantify risks to public health during recovery.The study will apply next-generation, toxicogenomics-enabled in vitro assays for timely and informative water quality monitoring, coupled with strain-resolved metagenomic data to identify risks originating from the presence of host of microbial pathogens. The results have the potential to lead to a paradigm shift in water remediation efficacy assessment from older methods that frequently suffer from bias and limited chemical and microbiological information. This will provide timely and useful information needed to facilitate containment and response strategies development and, to help inform the public and government of any potential ecological and health impacts associated the recent extreme weather events.