Joan Rose, the Homer Nowlin Chair of Water Research at Michigan State University, will be discussing water quality and health issues at 12 p.m. on Thursday, April 28 in 102 Animal, Veterinary, & Biomedical Sciences Building.

There are 16 critical infrastructure sectors in which the assets, systems, and networks – whether physical or virtual – are considered so vital to countries world-wide that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof.

Water is one of those critical pieces. In the last 60 years, we have seen an acceleration of population growth (in people and animals), land use change, use of fertilizers, and water. This has led us into the Anthropocene where continued water quality degradation – as demonstrated by increased eutrophication and fecal contamination associated with microbial hazards and antibiotic resistance – is a global phenomenon. This is all exacerbated by climate change. Waterborne diseases in humans are characterized by pathogens including bacteria, parasites and viruses which are persistent, potent, excreted at high numbers and zoonotic. Through the use of new molecular tools and instrumentation, specific hazards are now identifiable (through microbial source tracking and pathogen specific diagnostic testing). These technological advances have allowed for improved watershed and wastewater monitoring to provide the necessary data for making decisions. Effective and efficient mitigation requires understanding fecal pollution and control of the variety of microbial hazards using improved microbial risk assessment frameworks. We must remove 99.9% of pathogens in wastewater prior to discharge to maintain low risk and enhance safety of water to support ecosystem services.

Please pre-register here so that we may communicate with attendees in case of changes or other announcements:

Reach out to safes@psu.edu if you have any questions. Check out the entire series and pre-register for other speakers.