{"id":1062,"date":"2014-09-09T18:15:11","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T18:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teresadawson.wordpress.com\/?p=658"},"modified":"2019-05-24T20:53:30","modified_gmt":"2019-05-24T20:53:30","slug":"link-unclear-between-ocean-water-infections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=1062","title":{"rendered":"Link Unclear Between Ocean Water, Infections"},"content":{"rendered":"
If sewage effluent that has not been disinfected reaches nearshore waters, it stands to reason that at least some of the bacteria it contains will be carried there as well. But to date, few studies have been done to investigate the link.<\/div>\n
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Neither the recent USGS report, by Hunt and Rosa, nor the\u00a0Marine Pollution Bulletin<\/i>\u00a0report, by Dailer and others, tackles the subject of pathogens that may be in nearshore water that receives sewage effluent.<\/div>\n
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However, there is anecdotal evidence aplenty. When the Environmental Protection Agency had hearings on the Lahaina injection well permit last August, Robin Knox, an expert in water quality analysis, testified that she and many others she knew had developed methicillin-resistant staph infections (MRSA). \u201cI have to worry about getting sick when I go to do my job,\u201d she said. \u201cMy co-workers are sick. They have the antibiotic resistant staph infections. It\u2019s from diving in the places where the injection wells are, [where] effluents are coming out on the reef.<\/p>\n

Dailer, corresponding author of the\u00a0Marine Pollution Bulletin<\/i>\u00a0article, has also had many staph infections, despite taking precautions. \u201cWe cover ourselves in liquid antibacterial soap before putting on our wetsuits,\u201d she said in a phone interview. A disinfection protocol was added to the dive plan for nearshore work. Now that her permanent sites are installed and she doesn\u2019t have to stay in the effluent affected areas as long, the problem of infections has gone away.<\/p>\n

Darla White, an employee of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources\u2019 Division of Aquatic Resources, worked with Dailer in collecting samples for the USGS report. She, too, had had MRSA infections \u2013 \u201cseven times, three of which have been confirmed by hospitals, with one minor surgery,\u201d she testified. \u201cAnd I have a number of colleagues and friends who are also water researchers, water people, who are constantly getting sick.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s statistical evidence as well \u2013 although it does not link the incidence of MRSA in Hawai`i with ocean recreation. In the past, cases of methicillin-resistant\u00a0Staphylococcus aureus<\/i>\u00a0(MRSA) were generally associated with being hospitalized. But over the last decade, the number of cases of MRSA seen in people who had had no involvement with hospitals or other medical facilities has grown, leading the Centers for Disease Control to distinguish between health-care associated MRSA (HA-MRSA, for short) and community-associated MRSA (CA-MRSA). In 2006, Hawai`i led the nation in MRSA hospitalizations per 100,000 population, with Maui \u2013 188 MRSA hospitalizations per 100,000 \u2013 leading Hawai`i. On the mainland, the incidence is about 100 hospitalizations per 100,000. The figures are not broken down by CA or HA, but, according to the CDC, about 12 percent of MRSA cases are community-associated.<\/p>\n

Whether the staph infections are a result of sewage in the water or the shedding of bacteria from other swimmers is not known. In the 1990s, Roger Fujioka of the University of Hawai`i\u2019s Water Resources Research Center discovered staph in seawater, but found that the counts fell off at night and that no staph bacteria were recovered from the Ala Wai \u2013 all of which suggested to him that swimmers were the source.<\/p>\n

Fujioka has also studied\u00a0Enterococcus<\/i>\u00a0in ocean water, and his work is largely responsible for the fact that in Hawai`i, as opposed to everywhere else in the United States, the presence of\u00a0Enterococcus<\/i>\u00a0is discounted as evidence of contamination of the water with animal feces. Fujioka has argued thatEnterococcus<\/i>\u00a0occurs naturally in tropical soils, so that high counts of the bacteria in surface waters do not necessarily indicate fecal contamination.<\/p>\n

But a recent study published in\u00a0EcoHealth<\/i>\u00a0in March challenges Fujioka\u2019s claims. The report, by Guy Ragosta, Carl Evensen, and others, looked atEnterococci<\/i>\u00a0in Waipa Stream on Kaua`i\u2019s North Shore, extending from the mouth of the stream to high in the mountains. Ragosta and his colleagues had little luck when they looked for\u00a0Enterococci<\/i>\u00a0in soil: \u201c75 percent of the soil samples tested were below the detectable limit.\u201d However, the presence of cattle, feral pigs, and humans was associated with high levels of Enterococci, with levels at the stream mouth as high as 1,203 MPN per 100 milliliters of water. (The geometric mean recorded at the site varied over time, but in no case did it fall below the recommended EPA standard of 33 MPN\/100 ml for fresh water.) Furthermore, by analyzing the enterococcal surface protein, Ragosta and colleagues found that some of the samples originated from human feces. (MPN stands for most probable number.)<\/p>\n

According to Dailer, a study of pathogens in Maui\u2019s nearshore waters is in the works.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Patricia Tummons<\/b><\/div>\n
Volume 20, Number 11 — May 2010<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If sewage effluent that has not been disinfected reaches nearshore waters, it stands to reason that at least some of the bacteria it contains will be carried there as well. But to date, few studies have been done to investigate … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-may-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}