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While researchers focus on drinking water safety issues on a mini- and microscale, policy makers consider these issues on the local and global levels. Thus, for example, officials of the World Health Organization (WHO) issued guidelines aimed at assessing and improving drinking water quality worldwide, according to NRC committee member Mark Sobsey of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Those guidelines recommend adapting to drinking water supplies the essentials of the hazard analysis and critical control points (HAACP) approach that is being used widely throughout the food industry to improve product safety.

Although the WHO water safety guidelines are widely distributed, they are a long way from being implemented—in part, because of international-level disagreements over what microbiological indicators are appropriate. Similar disagreements also continue on the national, state, and local levels—sometimes even while practical monitoring of indicator microbes slips by the wayside.

Part of the problem is that state and local governments along with water utilities lack resources for tracking waterborne pathogens, according to workshop participant Christopher Crockett of the Philadelphia Water Department in Philadelphia, Pa. Funds are flowing again, partly because of heightened concerns over sabotage by terrorists. Even so, he says, "There's more monitoring for trout fisheries than for [drinking water]." Moreover, although standards mandate the monitoring of bacterial pathogens, they typically are well controlled by chlorine treatments, whereas "we really care about viruses and cryptococcus."

Some of the pressure to monitor for safety comes from recreational users of rivers or other waterways, because those users may be exposed to contaminant pathogens before the water is treated, filtered, and piped to consumers. Also, monitoring microorganisms in water aims at lowering risks to potential consumers of fish or shellfish harvested from monitored waters. Here, although fecal coliforms including Escherichia coli are standard bearers for such monitoring, "a battery of…indicators is needed," says Geoff Scott of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who tracks waters along coastal South Carolina.

Scott's shoreline surveys entail using antibiotic resistance markers to determine from where contaminant bacterial strains are emanating. Recent studies indicate that run-off from land that is fertilized with sewage plant effluents is a major source in local estuarial waters of coliform contaminants carrying multidrug resistance markers, he says. Such markers are "pervasive where sewage is being applied to land, particularly golf courses."

Jeffrey L. Fox
Jeffrey L. Fox is the ASM News Current Topics and Features Editor.