Diarrhoeal Health Risks Attributable to Water-Borne-Pathogens in Arsenic-Mitigated Drinking Water in West Bengal are Largely Independent of the Microbiological Quality of the Supplied Water

Water

Debapriya Mondal²  Bhaswati Ganguli¹  Sugata Sen Roy¹  Babli Halder³  Nilanjana Banerjee²  Mayukh Banerjee²  Maitreya Samanta²  Ashok K. Giri³ 

[1] Department of Statistics, University of Calcutta, 35 Ballygunge Circular Road, Kolkata 700019, West Bengal, India; E-Mails:;School of Earth Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK; E-Mails:;Molecular and Human Genetics Division, CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, 4, Raja S.C. Mullick Road, Kolkata 700032, West Bengal, India; E-Mails:

关键词: arsenic in groundwater;    mitigation;    water-borne pathogens;    health risk substitution;    disease burden;    West Bengal;   

DOI  :  10.3390/w6051100

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

There is a growing discussion about the possibility of arsenic mitigation measures in Bengal and similar areas leading to undesirable substitution of water-borne-pathogen attributable risks pathogens for risks attributable to arsenic, in part because of uncertainties in relative pathogen concentrations in supplied and end-use water. We try to resolve this discussion, by assessing the relative contributions of water supply and end-user practices to water-borne-pathogen-attributable risks for arsenic mitigation options in a groundwater arsenic impacted area of West Bengal. Paired supplied arsenic-mitigated water and end-use drinking water samples from 102 households were collected and analyzed for arsenic and thermally tolerant coliforms [TTC], used as a proxy for microbiological water quality, We then estimated the DALYs related to key sequelae, diarrheal diseases and cancers, arising from water-borne pathogens and arsenic respectively. We found [TTC] in end-use drinking water to depend only weakly on [TTC] in source-water. End-user practices far outweighed the microbiological quality of supplied water in determining diarrheal disease burden. [TTC] in source water was calculated to contribute <1% of total diarrheal disease burden. No substantial demonstrable pathogen-for-arsenic risk substitution attributable to specific arsenic mitigation of supplied waters was observed, illustrating the benefits of arsenic mitigation measures in the area studied.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.