Viruses From Sewage Contaminate Deep Well Water

First time accepted submitter ckwu writes "Scientists once thought that pathogens could not reach drinking water wells sunk into deep, protected groundwater aquifers. Nevertheless, over the past decade, researchers have identified diarrhea-causing viruses at a handful of deep bedrock well sites in the U.S. and Europe. Now, researchers report where these pathogenic viruses may have originated. The viruses appear to seep from sewer pipes and then swiftly penetrate drinking water wells. Experts recommend that public water systems might need to start testing for viruses on a routine basis."

Comments

Simple solution

[schneidafunk]

Just drink bottled water! Oh wait, doesn't that come from the same place? Beer it is then.

Re:Simple solution

[DougOtto]

Hops are a pretty effective anti-pathogen. In most beers the alcohol content isn't significant in that regard.

This is what happens ...

[gstoddart]

This is what happens when you say "in the absence of evidence it's harmful, we'll assume it's safe".

It seems entirely reasonable that it going to move around underground. Water tends to do that.

Sadly, this is not much different from all of the fracking and the like going on -- everybody says "well, it must be safe since there's no evidence to the contrary", and then people find themselves with flammable tap water. Then the companies try hard to deny that what they did had any impact, and that it must have been contaminated before (even when things were tested and came up clean).

Water will move around in cracks, and penetrate wherever it can. Human sewage is going to be full of pathogens, and those aren't going to stay put because we want them to.

Re:Oops.

[ColdWetDog]

OK, now that I actually read the TFA I'm not terribly surprised - other than the fact that this study apparently hasn't been done before.

Researchers tracked human pathogenic viruses in a city sewage system. The concentration of the little critters varies as waves of infection go back and forth amongst the humans and other creatures whose waste is collected in the system.

The then track the appearance of viruses in a deep well under the sewage lines and find that about six weeks later, the same virus shows up in the presumably sterile well water with roughly the same kinetics (peak and ebb). So they are able to posit (but not prove) that the viruses came from the sewage system (as opposed to skinnying down the pipe itself or just magically appearing).

So, you have unmapped connections through the supposedly sealed off clay cap that lies between the sewage systems and the aquifer. Doesn't surprise me. One small earthquake 100000 years ago could have done it.

But it is a cautionary tale that deserves some additional testing to see how widespread the issue is.

A Misleading Statement in the Article

[srobert]

The article states that viruses in drinking water aren't regulated by the EPA. That's a bit misleading. Regulations pertaining to pathogens in surface water and ground water sources in drinking water are largely based on disinfection criteria that would remove or inactivate 99.99% of viruses from the water.

http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/pathogens.cfm#What%20pathogens%20does%20EPA%20regulate%20in%20drinking%20water,%20and%20what%20are%20their%20health%20effects?

Steve Robertson, PE
Las Vegas Valley Water District
Planning Division
Water Quality Team

Finally, after 15 years, a Slashdot article in my field.

Re:One word

[hairyfeet]

Fuck ground water, have you looked at how many fricking earthquakes AR has had in the last 15 years and then compared it to what the state saw for a century? You can just go yanking shit deep underground without causing serious problems the the stability of the ground above it, you just can't.

Oh and I have dealt a little with the wildcatters and what you need to know is they can get away with anything because they set their businesses up from the start to be liability proof, which frankly ought to tell you something. The wildcatters OWN NOTHING as they have it set up so the least their gear, down to the last stapler, from a shell corp they have set up overseas. Its all bullshit, same guys own both corps, its set up that way so if they poison a town or seriously fuck shit up someplace they can just "burn" the original company (with zero penalty) and then make a new one the same day with a different name but the same people and equipment because that gear is owned by the shell corp.

Its a great scam, we had some wildcatters disappear owing more than a quarter mil to several businesses and I got some nice deals picking through their corpses at auction but the wildcatters themselves? They just burnt the company and the next town over set up anew with the new name, hell of a scam they got going, practically free money and no risks.