Water quality and health: An ecological perspective

Water quality in its natural state is shaped by soil, sediments, runoff, and is defined by physico-chemical factors such as pH, clarity, and inorganic content. Organic compounds are added through natural biological processes in rivers, lakes, and groundwater. However, human activity has significantly altered this balance—reducing water quantity, concentrating pollutants, and introducing synthetic organics, additional inorganics, and microorganisms, leading to higher overall pollutant loads.

In a new study published in Water & Ecology, a team of researchers from Canada and the US provided an overview of the advancing science important for assessing water quality and health, to better understand environmental pollution and to improve ecosystem health and services.

1. The One-Water/One-Health Framework:

This framework emphasizes the critical link between water quality and the health of humans, animals, and ecosystems. Maintaining this relationship sustainably requires integrated water quality monitoring/assessment, pollution prevention, and water resources management. Monitoring ensures safe water for drinking, agriculture, and food production, preventing contaminants from entering the food chain.

To safeguard water quality, the framework advocates for managing agricultural runoff, urban sewage, and industrial wastewater, exploring treated water reuse for irrigation, industry, and groundwater recharge. It also stresses researching virus-host interactions, the impacts of emerging contaminants, and employing ecological approaches to balance the needs of water supply, use, and reuse.

Cross-disciplinary collaboration is essential to understand complex water-health relationships and develop sustainable management strategies.

2. Advancing science in three topics:

i) Environmental Virology reveals viruses as sensitive indicators of fecal pollution and ecosystem health, regulating host populations like algae and bacteria and influencing biogeochemical cycles. Advanced research includes exploring lytic bacteriophages for bioremediation and identifying novel giant viruses with potential pathogenicity. Technologically, virus detection has shifted from cell culture to highly sensitive molecular techniques (qPCR, digital PCR) and culture-independent NGS-based metagenomics.

ii) Emerging Contaminants (ECs), such as EDCs, pharmaceuticals, and PFAS, threaten health through persistence and accumulation. The paper recognizes their complex environmental transformations and impacts, driving the need for source control and bans on high-risk substances. Innovation leverages AI for real-time ECs data analysis and predictive modeling, promotes sustainable nature-based treatment systems (e.g., constructed wetlands), and necessitates advanced treatment steps (e.g., AOPs, membranes) alongside conventional plants.

iii) For the Wastewater-Water amalgam, blending of wastewater with natural waters demands pollution control and water reuse. The paper highlights increasing global fecal pollution loads and associated pathogen risks, exacerbated by climate change. Technical innovation integrates diverse datasets (population, livestock, hydrology models) with risk assessment to map global pathogen risks. They identify hotspots and the contribution of human-sourced contaminants to waterborne disease risk in vulnerable populations. Solutions emphasize integrated, artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced strategies and combined centralized/decentralized treatment with nature-based systems.

3. Outlook:

Systemic solutions integrate policy, like banning persistent pollutants (e.g., certain PFAS), with technology, combining AI-driven prediction models and ecological engineering (e.g., constructed wetlands) to reduce costs, while advancing the circular water economy through resource recovery.

The expanded global wastewater surveillance network enables precise pathogen/contaminant tracking for targeted management. Nonetheless, key bottlenecks persist in virology: molecular methods cannot distinguish infectivity; practical capsid integrity assays are lacking; virus concentration is inefficient; and NGS bioinformatics tools need improvement.

Implementing the cross-scale One-Water/One-Health framework requires integrating diverse data streams (monitoring, pathogen mapping, source tracking) and increased investment in distributed water reuse systems, particularly in high-potential, low-treatment regions (e.g., South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa), to balance ecological safety and health equity.

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Contact the author:

Joan B Rose

Department of Fisheries & Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. E-mail: rosejo@msu.edu

Banu Örmeci

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa K1S 5B6, Canada. E-mail: banu.ormeci@carleton.ca

Tiong Gim Aw

Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Tulane University, New Orleans LA70118, USA. E-mail: taw@tulane.edu

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