Prüss-Üstün A, Bos R, Gore F, Bartram J, 2008. Safer Water, Better Health: Costs, Benefits and Sustainability of Interventions to Protect and Promote Health. Geneva: WHO.
Gundry S, Wright J, Conroy R, 2004. A systematic review of the health outcomes related to household water quality in developing countries. J Water Health 2: 1–13.
Cutler D, Miller G, 2005. The role of public health improvements in health advances: the twentieth-century United States. Demography 42: 1–22.
Fewtrell L, Kaufmann RB, Kay D, Enanoria W, Haller L, Colford JM, 2005. Water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions to reduce diarrhea in less developed countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Lancet Infect Dis 5: 42–52.
Clasen T, Schmidt W-P, Rabie T, Roberts I, Cairncross S, 2007. Interventions to improve water quality for preventing diarrhea: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ British Medical Journal 334: 782–792.
WHO, Guidelines for Drinking-Water Quality. Fourth edition. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2011.
Ashbolt N, Grabow W, Snozzi M, 2001. Indicators of microbial water quality: water quality. Fewtrell L, Bartram J, eds. Water Quality: Guidelines, Standards and Health. London: World Health Organization/IWA Publishing, 289–314.
Rahman Z, Crocker J, Chang K, Khush R, Bartram J, 2011. A comparative assessment of institutional frameworks for managing drinking water quality. Journal of Water Sanitation Hygiene and Develop 1: 242–258.
MacKenzie WR, Schell WL, Blair KA, Addiss DG, Peterson DE, Hoxie NJ, Kazmierczak JJ, Davis JP, 1995. Massive outbreak of waterborne cryptosporidium infection in Milwaukee, Wisconsin: recurrence of illness and risk of secondary transmission. Clin Infect Dis 21: 57–62.
Solo-Gabriele HM, Wolfert MA, Desmarais TR, Palmer CJ, 2000. Sources of Escherichia coli in a coastal subtropical environment. Appl Environ Microbiol 66: 230–237.
Rivera SC, Hazen TC, Toranzos GA, 1988. Isolation of fecal coliforms from pristine sites in a tropical rain forest. Appl Environ Microbiol 54: 513–517.
Jiménez L, Muñiz I, Toranzos GA, Hazen TC, 1989. Survival and activity of Salmonella typhimurium and Escherichia coli in tropical freshwater. J Appl Bacteriol 67: 61–69.
National Research Council, 2005. Health Effects Assessment. Committee on Indicators for Waterborne Pathogens; Board on Life Sciences; Water Science and Technology Board, ed. Indicators for Waterborne Pathogens. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 53–108.
Wu J, Long SC, Das D, Dorner SM, 2011. Are microbial indicators and pathogens correlated? A statistical analysis of 40 years of research. J Water Health 9: 265–278.
Henry FJ, Huttly SR, Patwary Y, Aziz KM, 2009. Environmental sanitation, food and water contamination and diarrhea in rural Bangladesh. Epidemiol Infect 104: 253–259.
Moe CL, Sobsey MD, Samsa GP, Mesolo V, 1991. Bacterial indicators of risk of diarrheal disease from drinking-water in the Philippines. Bull World Health Organ 69: 305–317.
Jensen PK, Jayasinghe G, Van der Hoek W, Cairncross S, Dalsgaard A, 2004. Is there an association between bacteriological drinking water quality and childhood diarrhea in developing countries? TM & IH 9: 1210–1215.
Brown JM, Proum S, Sobsey MD. 2008. Escherichia coli in household drinking water and diarrheal disease risk: evidence from Cambodia. Water Sci Technol 58: 757–763.
Levy K, Nelson KL, Hubbard A, Eisenberg JN, 2012. Rethinking indicators of microbial drinking water quality for health studies in tropical developing countries: case study in northern coastal Ecuador. Am J Trop Med Hyg 86: 499–507.
Manja K, Maurya M, Rao K, 1982. A simple field test for the detection of fecal pollution in drinking water. Bull World Health Organ 60: 797–801.
Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission, 2006. Guidelines for National Rural Drinking Water Quality Monitoring and Surveillance Programme. New Delhi: Department of Drinking Water Supply, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India.
Wright JA, Yang H, Walker K, Pedley S, Elliott J, Gundry SW, 2012. The H2S test versus standard indicator bacteria tests for fecal contamination of water: systematic review and meta-analysis. TM & IH 17: 94–105.
Castillo G, Duarte R, Ruiz Z, Marucic MT, Honorato B, Mercado R, Coloma V, Lorca V, Martins MT, Dutka BJ, 1994. Evaluation of disinfected and untreated drinking water supplies in Chile by the H2S paper strip test. Water Res 28: 1765–1770.
McMahan L, Grunden AM, Devine AA, Sobsey MD, 2012. Evaluation of a quantitative H2S MPN test for fecal microbes analysis of water using biochemical and molecular identification. Water Res 46: 1693–1704.
Arnold BF, Khush RS, Ramaswamy P, London AG, Rajkumar P, Ramaprabha P, Durairaj N, Hubbard AE, Balakrishnan K, Colford JM, 2010. Causal inference methods to study nonrandomized, preexisting development interventions. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107: 22605–22610.
Baqui AH, Black RE, Yunus M, Hoque AR, Chowdhury HR, Sack RB, 1991. Methodological issues in diarrheal diseases epidemiology: definition of diarrheal episodes. Int J Epidemiol 20: 1057–1063.
Schmidt W-P, Arnold BF, Boisson S, Genser B, Luby SP, Barreto ML, Clasen T, Cairncross S, 2011. Epidemiological methods in diarrhea studies–an update. Int J Epidemiol 40: 1678–1692.
Goldman N, Vaughan B, Pebley AR, 1998. The use of calendars to measure child illness in health interview surveys. Int J Epidemiol 27: 505–512.
Altman DG, Bland JM, 1994. Diagnostic tests 2: predictive values. BMJ 309: 102.
McNutt L-A, Wu C, Xue X, Hafner JP, 2003. Estimating the relative risk in cohort studies and clinical trials of common outcomes. Am J Epidemiol 157: 940–943.
Freedman DA, 2006. Statistical models for causation: what inferential leverage do they provide? Eval Rev 30: 691–713.
Lipsitch M, Tchetgen Tchetgen E, Cohen T, 2010. Negative controls: a tool for detecting confounding and bias in observational studies. Epidemiology 21: 383–388.
WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program, 2012. Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation: 2012 Update. New York: UNICEF & WHO.
Lloyd B, Bartram J, 1991. Surveillance solutions to microbiological problems in water quality control in developing countries. Water Sci Technol 24: 61–75.
Howard G, 2003. Water safety plans for small systems: a model for applying HACCP concepts for cost-effective monitoring in developing countries. Water Sci Technol 47: 215–220.
Davison A, Howard G, Stevens M, Callan P, 2004. Water Safety Plans. Geneva: WHO.
Ratto A, Dutka B, Vega C, Lopez C, El-Shaarawi A, 1989. Potable water safety assessed by coliphage and bacterial tests. Water Res 23: 253–255.
Sobsey M, Pfaender F, 2002. Evaluation of the H2S Method for Detection of Fecal Contamination of Drinking Water. Geneva: WHO.
Roser DJ, Ashbolt N, Ho G, Mathew K, Nair J, Ryken-Rapp D, Toze S, 2005. Hydrogen sulphide production tests and the detection of groundwater fecal contamination by septic seepage. Water Sci Technol 51: 291–300.
Gupta SK, Sheikh MA, Islam MS, Rahman KS, Jahan N, Rahman MM, Hoekstra RM, Johnston R, Ram PK, Luby S, 2008. Usefulness of the hydrogen sulfide test for assessment of water quality in Bangladesh. J Appl Microbiol 104: 388–395.
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In this large-scale longitudinal study conducted in rural Southern India, we compared a presence/absence hydrogen sulfide (H2S) test with quantitative assays for total coliforms and Escherichia coli as measures of water quality, health risk, and water supply vulnerability to microbial contamination. None of the three indicators showed a significant association with child diarrhea. The presence of H2S in a water sample was associated with higher levels of total coliform species that may have included E. coli but that were not restricted to E. coli. In addition, we observed a strong relationship between the percent positive H2S test results and total coliform levels among water source samples (R2 = 0.87). The consistent relationships between H2S and total coliform levels indicate that presence/absence of H2S tests provide a cost-effective option for assessing both the vulnerability of water supplies to microbial contamination and the results of water quality management and risk mitigation efforts.
Financial support: This study was supported by a grant from the Open Square Foundation to The Aquaya Institute.
Authors' addresses: Ranjiv S. Khush, The Aquaya Institute, San Francisco, CA, E-mail: ranjiv@aquaya.org. Benjamin F. Arnold, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA, E-mail: benarnold@berkeley.edu. Padma Srikanth and Suchithra Sudharsanam, Department of Microbiology, Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, E-mails: srikanth_padma@rediffmail.com and suchisanam_84@yahoo.com. Padmavathi Ramaswamy and Prabhakar Ramaprabha, Department of Physiology, Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, E-mails: drpadmavathi@yahoo.com and abyrr@yahoo.com. Natesan Durairaj, Kalpana Balakrishnan, and Paramasivan Rajkumar, Department of Environmental and Health Engineering, Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, E-mails: n_durai2008@yahoo.com, kalpanasrmc@gmail.com, and rkpk16@yahoo.co.in. Alicia G. London, San Francisco, CA, E-mail: alicialgray@gmail.com. John M. Colford Jr., School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA, E-mail: jcolford@berkeley.edu.
Prüss-Üstün A, Bos R, Gore F, Bartram J, 2008. Safer Water, Better Health: Costs, Benefits and Sustainability of Interventions to Protect and Promote Health. Geneva: WHO.
Gundry S, Wright J, Conroy R, 2004. A systematic review of the health outcomes related to household water quality in developing countries. J Water Health 2: 1–13.
Cutler D, Miller G, 2005. The role of public health improvements in health advances: the twentieth-century United States. Demography 42: 1–22.
Fewtrell L, Kaufmann RB, Kay D, Enanoria W, Haller L, Colford JM, 2005. Water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions to reduce diarrhea in less developed countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Lancet Infect Dis 5: 42–52.
Clasen T, Schmidt W-P, Rabie T, Roberts I, Cairncross S, 2007. Interventions to improve water quality for preventing diarrhea: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ British Medical Journal 334: 782–792.
WHO, Guidelines for Drinking-Water Quality. Fourth edition. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2011.
Ashbolt N, Grabow W, Snozzi M, 2001. Indicators of microbial water quality: water quality. Fewtrell L, Bartram J, eds. Water Quality: Guidelines, Standards and Health. London: World Health Organization/IWA Publishing, 289–314.
Rahman Z, Crocker J, Chang K, Khush R, Bartram J, 2011. A comparative assessment of institutional frameworks for managing drinking water quality. Journal of Water Sanitation Hygiene and Develop 1: 242–258.
MacKenzie WR, Schell WL, Blair KA, Addiss DG, Peterson DE, Hoxie NJ, Kazmierczak JJ, Davis JP, 1995. Massive outbreak of waterborne cryptosporidium infection in Milwaukee, Wisconsin: recurrence of illness and risk of secondary transmission. Clin Infect Dis 21: 57–62.
Solo-Gabriele HM, Wolfert MA, Desmarais TR, Palmer CJ, 2000. Sources of Escherichia coli in a coastal subtropical environment. Appl Environ Microbiol 66: 230–237.
Rivera SC, Hazen TC, Toranzos GA, 1988. Isolation of fecal coliforms from pristine sites in a tropical rain forest. Appl Environ Microbiol 54: 513–517.
Jiménez L, Muñiz I, Toranzos GA, Hazen TC, 1989. Survival and activity of Salmonella typhimurium and Escherichia coli in tropical freshwater. J Appl Bacteriol 67: 61–69.
National Research Council, 2005. Health Effects Assessment. Committee on Indicators for Waterborne Pathogens; Board on Life Sciences; Water Science and Technology Board, ed. Indicators for Waterborne Pathogens. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 53–108.
Wu J, Long SC, Das D, Dorner SM, 2011. Are microbial indicators and pathogens correlated? A statistical analysis of 40 years of research. J Water Health 9: 265–278.
Henry FJ, Huttly SR, Patwary Y, Aziz KM, 2009. Environmental sanitation, food and water contamination and diarrhea in rural Bangladesh. Epidemiol Infect 104: 253–259.
Moe CL, Sobsey MD, Samsa GP, Mesolo V, 1991. Bacterial indicators of risk of diarrheal disease from drinking-water in the Philippines. Bull World Health Organ 69: 305–317.
Jensen PK, Jayasinghe G, Van der Hoek W, Cairncross S, Dalsgaard A, 2004. Is there an association between bacteriological drinking water quality and childhood diarrhea in developing countries? TM & IH 9: 1210–1215.
Brown JM, Proum S, Sobsey MD. 2008. Escherichia coli in household drinking water and diarrheal disease risk: evidence from Cambodia. Water Sci Technol 58: 757–763.
Levy K, Nelson KL, Hubbard A, Eisenberg JN, 2012. Rethinking indicators of microbial drinking water quality for health studies in tropical developing countries: case study in northern coastal Ecuador. Am J Trop Med Hyg 86: 499–507.
Manja K, Maurya M, Rao K, 1982. A simple field test for the detection of fecal pollution in drinking water. Bull World Health Organ 60: 797–801.
Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission, 2006. Guidelines for National Rural Drinking Water Quality Monitoring and Surveillance Programme. New Delhi: Department of Drinking Water Supply, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India.
Wright JA, Yang H, Walker K, Pedley S, Elliott J, Gundry SW, 2012. The H2S test versus standard indicator bacteria tests for fecal contamination of water: systematic review and meta-analysis. TM & IH 17: 94–105.
Castillo G, Duarte R, Ruiz Z, Marucic MT, Honorato B, Mercado R, Coloma V, Lorca V, Martins MT, Dutka BJ, 1994. Evaluation of disinfected and untreated drinking water supplies in Chile by the H2S paper strip test. Water Res 28: 1765–1770.
McMahan L, Grunden AM, Devine AA, Sobsey MD, 2012. Evaluation of a quantitative H2S MPN test for fecal microbes analysis of water using biochemical and molecular identification. Water Res 46: 1693–1704.
Arnold BF, Khush RS, Ramaswamy P, London AG, Rajkumar P, Ramaprabha P, Durairaj N, Hubbard AE, Balakrishnan K, Colford JM, 2010. Causal inference methods to study nonrandomized, preexisting development interventions. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 107: 22605–22610.
Baqui AH, Black RE, Yunus M, Hoque AR, Chowdhury HR, Sack RB, 1991. Methodological issues in diarrheal diseases epidemiology: definition of diarrheal episodes. Int J Epidemiol 20: 1057–1063.
Schmidt W-P, Arnold BF, Boisson S, Genser B, Luby SP, Barreto ML, Clasen T, Cairncross S, 2011. Epidemiological methods in diarrhea studies–an update. Int J Epidemiol 40: 1678–1692.
Goldman N, Vaughan B, Pebley AR, 1998. The use of calendars to measure child illness in health interview surveys. Int J Epidemiol 27: 505–512.
Altman DG, Bland JM, 1994. Diagnostic tests 2: predictive values. BMJ 309: 102.
McNutt L-A, Wu C, Xue X, Hafner JP, 2003. Estimating the relative risk in cohort studies and clinical trials of common outcomes. Am J Epidemiol 157: 940–943.
Freedman DA, 2006. Statistical models for causation: what inferential leverage do they provide? Eval Rev 30: 691–713.
Lipsitch M, Tchetgen Tchetgen E, Cohen T, 2010. Negative controls: a tool for detecting confounding and bias in observational studies. Epidemiology 21: 383–388.
WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program, 2012. Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation: 2012 Update. New York: UNICEF & WHO.
Lloyd B, Bartram J, 1991. Surveillance solutions to microbiological problems in water quality control in developing countries. Water Sci Technol 24: 61–75.
Howard G, 2003. Water safety plans for small systems: a model for applying HACCP concepts for cost-effective monitoring in developing countries. Water Sci Technol 47: 215–220.
Davison A, Howard G, Stevens M, Callan P, 2004. Water Safety Plans. Geneva: WHO.
Ratto A, Dutka B, Vega C, Lopez C, El-Shaarawi A, 1989. Potable water safety assessed by coliphage and bacterial tests. Water Res 23: 253–255.
Sobsey M, Pfaender F, 2002. Evaluation of the H2S Method for Detection of Fecal Contamination of Drinking Water. Geneva: WHO.
Roser DJ, Ashbolt N, Ho G, Mathew K, Nair J, Ryken-Rapp D, Toze S, 2005. Hydrogen sulphide production tests and the detection of groundwater fecal contamination by septic seepage. Water Sci Technol 51: 291–300.
Gupta SK, Sheikh MA, Islam MS, Rahman KS, Jahan N, Rahman MM, Hoekstra RM, Johnston R, Ram PK, Luby S, 2008. Usefulness of the hydrogen sulfide test for assessment of water quality in Bangladesh. J Appl Microbiol 104: 388–395.
Past two years | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 432 | 389 | 133 |
Full Text Views | 488 | 10 | 1 |
PDF Downloads | 136 | 7 | 1 |