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In 1996, amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act required the U.S. Centers forDisease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) to conduct studies to determine the occurrence of waterborne disease. The WaterEvaluation 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 allfederal and state treatment guidelines might nevertheless be associated with somegastrointestinal illnesses (such as diarrhea, nausea, or cramps). The study is beingconducted by Dr. Jack Colford M.D., Ph.D. of the University of California at BerkeleySchool of Public Health, the CDC, and the USEPA.The Davenport area was finally selected because it best satisfied all of the followingcriteria: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 watertreatment process. Drinking water in the Davenport area meets or is better than allfederal guidelines and safety standards.The study is a randomized, triple-blinded, placebo-controlled, cross-over interventionstudy. The intervention to be tested is household-level treatment of drinking water. Thewater will be treated using a kitchen countertop device that treats tap water withultraviolet (UV) light and micro-filtration. Participating households will be randomlyassigned to two different groups. One group will receive the active device and the otherwill receive an identical-looking placebo device. Half way through the study, "crossover"will take place: active devices will be replaced with inactive devices, and inactivedevices will be replaced with active devices. The participants, the study staff, and thedata analysis team will be blinded to (unaware of) which group each household has beenassigned throughout the study. A total of 400 households residing in Davenport,Bettendorf, Panorama Park, and Riverdale will be enrolled. Two hundred will start out inthe "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 waterconsumption. They will also be asked to drink water taken from the device attached totheir kitchen faucet and to take bottles of the water with them when they are away fromhome. Participants will be asked to report any symptoms of diarrhea, cramps, andvomiting during the year that they are enrolled in the study. A subset (35%) ofparticipants from both groups will be asked to provide stool specimens during agastrointestinal illness, and blood specimens at several points during the study. Thesesamples will be tested for common waterborne pathogens.Iowa American Water Company will cooperate with the American Water Works ServiceCompany (AWWSC) in conducting a water quality study in the Davenport area inparallel with the WET study. The goal of this project is to characterize water qualityconditions during the period that health data on WET participants are being collected.The water quality study is funded by the American Water Works Association ResearchFoundation. Iowa American Water Company already has an extensive water qualitymonitoring program that includes monitoring of the Mississippi at the treatment plant'sintake pipe, the water leaving the treatment plant, water throughout the area in the pipesof the distribution system and tap water. The planned water qu

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Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 06/16/2002 Number of Pages: 7File Size: 1 file , 480 KB