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Health Risks to Communities and Athletes Associated with Swimming, Wading, and Sailing in Water Bodies of Brazil’s Guanabara Bay Basin
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Health Risks to Communities and Athletes Associated with Swimming, Wading, and Sailing in Water Bodies of Brazil’s Guanabara Bay Basin

Rachel Sklar, Alexander E. Chabrelie, Renato S. Carreira, Patrick L. Gurian and Jade Mitchell
Water (Basel), v 15(14), p2509
09 Jul 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/w15142509
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.3390/w15142509View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)CC BY V4.0,  Open

Abstract

Guanabara Bay has been known to be polluted with trash and sewage from the surrounding areas, but health risks from recreational contact with water in the basin have not been well characterized. In this paper, fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) monitoring data are used to predict risks in three different exposure scenarios: (1) bathing in freshwater rivers that discharge into Guanabara Bay, (2) wading in these freshwater rivers, and (3) sailing in Guanabara Bay. Concentrations of indicator bacteria in river samples were measured directly, and concentrations of indicator bacteria in bay samples were sourced from publicly available government data sets. Ratios between pathogens and fecal indicator concentrations were used to estimate risks for five selected pathogens based on the indicator concentrations. The median risk of disease estimated from E. coli indicator concentrations was 1.0, 9.9 × 10−1 and 8.2 × 10−4 for the swimming, wading, and sailing exposure pathways, respectively. Risks estimates based on concentrations of the enterococci indicator bacteria in the sailing exposure scenario were comparable, at 3.4 × 10−4. The sum of total risk estimated from the five selected pathogens was 5.9 × 10−1, 3.6 × 10−1, and 1.0 × 10−3 for the swimming, wading, and sailing exposure pathways, respectively. Estimated risks of swimming and wading in the rivers far exceeded risks associated with U.S. recreational contact standards, while estimated risks for sailing in the bay were well below these risk guidelines. The 95th percentile of the sailing risk was estimated to exceed the U.S. recreational contact risk level. This paper exemplifies an approach to conducting quantitative microbial risk assessments when only fecal indicator bacteria data are available. Context-specific data on the relevant exposure routes, exposure frequency, and site-specific indicator: pathogen ratios were lacking, which ultimately led to uncertainty in the model. This study is intended to provide a framework for estimating GI risk based on fecal indicator concentrations while acknowledging that the substantial variation in indicator:pathogen ratios make the results of such efforts uncertain.

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8 Record Views
1 citations in Web of Science
2 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#6 Clean Water and Sanitation
#14 Life Below Water
#11 Sustainable Cities and Communities
#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Environmental Sciences
Water Resources
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