MRSA in water treatment plants! Panic?!

There is a new study just published in Environmental Health Perspectives that is getting a lot of media attention (here and here and here). The (open-access) study by University of Maryland researchers identified MRSA (and MSSA) in water samples collected during 2009/2010 from two mid-atlantic and two mid-western water treatment plants. They found that 50% of samples contained MRSA and 55% contained MSSA. Among the MRSA strains, 83% were SCCmec type IV and 15% were SCCmec type II, while 68% were pvl gene positive. USA100, USA300 and USA700 PFGE strain types were identified.

Sounds pretty scary, and if you don't read carefully, you might conclude that you shouldn't drink municipal water. However, it appears that most of the MRSA/MSSA was detected in "influent" or pretreatment samples, which were 83% positive, while 17% of post-treatment "effluent" samples were positive and only 8% were MRSA positive. This suggests that water treatment is effective in eliminating S. aureus, so keep drinking the water.

Note:  The positive samples in the effluent were collected during periods when seasonal chlorination was not taking place. Thus, if your municipality uses chlorination, there is likely little S. aureus risk. Also, we should ask if we can generalize beyond this 4-facility sample.

Image Source: EPA via CDC

Cholera in Haiti

A horrendous development, poised to get much worse if the epidemic begins spreading in Port-au-Prince. The preconditions for a massive outbreak are present, namely limited access to safe potable water and proper sanitation, both of which require an intact infrastructure. Over a million people are still living in tent camps around Port-au-Prince, with minimal or no sanitation.
While media attention is appropriately focused on Haiti, this should also serve as a reminder that cholera outbreaks occur regularly throughout the world, most commonly in sub-Saharan Africa, where Nigeria is now in the midst of a huge outbreak. These outbreaks typically receive very little media attention.

Not to be too Cavalier about this…..

….but I’ve never been very worried about communicable disease outbreaks from drinking water fountains (decorative fountains and Legionella, that’s a different story).

Nonetheless, Cleveland’s professional basketball franchise has removed all water fountains from the Quicken Loans Arena, as part of a new “cleaning and sanitizing” effort. Team spokesman Tad Carper cited the “national health landscape” as the reason…which I think harkens to one of Eli’s interests, the role of the media in generating irrational fear and free-floating anxiety about mega-superbugs (if I'm not mistaken, Eli is also a Cavaliers fan).

Despite their protestations to the contrary, I can’t help but suspect this is a plot to increase bottled water sales.

Water

After Mike's recent posts on food safety, he asked, "What's next?" As if on cue, the NY Times has a scary front pager on the safety of our water supply. About 20% of U.S. water treatment systems have violated the Safe Drinking Water Act in the last 5 years, but only a fraction were ever fined or punished. One of the more common violations? Elevated bacterial levels.

It's worrying that one of the more developed nations in the world is having trouble supplying safe water to its citizens. The availability of safe potable water is already a global crisis that will only grow more urgent with time.

On a lighter note, learn more about the importance of safe drinking water from General Ripper.