Indigenous microbial surrogates in wastewater used to understand public health risk expressed in the Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY) metric
Christopher EL Owens A B C H , Peter T Cox B , Paul M Byleveld D , Nicholas J Osborne E F G and Md Bayzidur Rahman AA The Kirby Institute, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of New South Wales, NSW, Australia
B Sydney Water Corporation, Parramatta, NSW, Australia
C Centre for Economic Impacts of Genomic Medicine, Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University, NSW, Australia
D NSW Health, Sydney, NSW, Australia
E School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Queensland, Qld, Australia
F School of Population Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of New South Wales, NSW, Australia
G European Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter, Royal Cornwall Hospital, Truro, UK
H Tel.: +61 403 854 950; Email: chris.owens@unswalumni.com
Microbiology Australia 42(3) 125-129 https://doi.org/10.1071/MA21037
Submitted: 11 August 2021 Accepted: 28 August 2021 Published: 15 September 2021
Journal Compilation © The Authors 2021 Open Access CC BY-NC-ND, published (by CSIRO Publishing) on behalf of the ASM
Abstract
In any wastewater recycling scheme, the protection of public health is of primary importance. In Australia, the public health requirements applying to the treatment of recycled water are stringent. They use the Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY) metric to set a level of negligible public health risk. The target maximum risk of 10–6 DALY per person per year has been adopted in Australian water recycling guidelines since 2006. A key benefit of the DALY approach is its ability to standardise the understanding of risk across disparate areas of public health. To address the key challenge of translating the results of monitoring of microorganisms in the recycled water into this quantitative public health metric, we have developed a novel method. This paper summarises an approach where microbial surrogate organisms indigenous to wastewater are used to measure the efficiency of water recycling treatment processes and estimate public health risk. An example of recent implementation in the Greater Sydney region of Australia is provided.
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