In 1996, amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act required the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) to conduct studies to determine the occurrence of waterborne disease. The Water
Evaluation Trial (WET) being conducted in Davenport, Iowa is one of these studies.
The Water Evaluation Trial is being done to find out if drinking water that meets all
federal and state treatment guidelines might nevertheless be associated with some
gastrointestinal illnesses (such as diarrhea, nausea, or cramps). The study is being
conducted by Dr. Jack Colford M.D., Ph.D. of the University of California at Berkeley
School of Public Health, the CDC, and the USEPA.
The Davenport area was finally selected because it best satisfied all of the following
criteria:
the entire community had to receive its drinking water from one surface water (river) source;
the source of supply should be microbially challenged;
the source water had to be treated at one water treatment plant;
the water had to be treated by conventional drinking water treatment methods;
the community had to be large enough (about 100,000 people) to do a study on 400 households; and,
the community also had to be fairly representative of a typical American metropolitan area.
Davenport was not selected because of any problem with the water quality or the water
treatment process. Drinking water in the Davenport area meets or is better than all
federal guidelines and safety standards.
The study is a randomized, triple-blinded, placebo-controlled, cross-over intervention
study. The intervention to be tested is household-level treatment of drinking water. The
water will be treated using a kitchen countertop device that treats tap water with
ultraviolet (UV) light and micro-filtration. Participating households will be randomly
assigned to two different groups. One group will receive the active device and the other
will receive an identical-looking placebo device. Half way through the study, "crossover"
will take place: active devices will be replaced with inactive devices, and inactive
devices will be replaced with active devices. The participants, the study staff, and the
data analysis team will be blinded to (unaware of) which group each household has been
assigned throughout the study. A total of 400 households residing in Davenport,
Bettendorf, Panorama Park, and Riverdale will be enrolled. Two hundred will start out in
the "active device" group and 200 will start in the "placebo device" group.
Households in both groups will fill out questionnaires and health diaries for one year.
They will be asked to provide information about their health and their water
consumption. They will also be asked to drink water taken from the device attached to
their kitchen faucet and to take bottles of the water with them when they are away from
home. Participants will be asked to report any symptoms of diarrhea, cramps, and
vomiting during the year that they are enrolled in the study. A subset (35%) of
participants from both groups will be asked to provide stool specimens during a
gastrointestinal illness, and blood specimens at several points during the study. These
samples will be tested for common waterborne pathogens.
Iowa American Water Company will cooperate with the American Water Works Service
Company (AWWSC) in conducting a water quality study in the Davenport area in
parallel with the WET study. The goal of this project is to characterize water quality
conditions during the period that health data on WET participants are being collected.
The water quality study is funded by the American Water Works Association Research
Foundation. Iowa American Water Company already has an extensive water quality
monitoring program that includes monitoring of the Mississippi at the treatment plant's
intake pipe, the water leaving the treatment plant, water throughout the area in the pipes
of the distribution system and tap water. The planned water qu
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 480 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 7 |
| Published : | 06/16/2002 |
