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Integrating different tools and technologies to advance drinking water quality exposure assessments

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Abstract

Contaminants in drinking water are a major contributor to the human exposome and adverse health effects. Assessing drinking water exposure accurately in health studies is challenging, as several of the following study design domains should be addressed as adequately as possible. In this paper, we identify the domains Time, Space, Data Quality, Data Accessibility, economic considerations of Study Size, and Complex Mixtures. We present case studies for three approaches or technologies that address these domains differently in the context of exposure assessment of drinking water quality: regulated contaminants in monitoring databases, high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS)-based wide-scope chemical analysis, and effect-based bioassay methods. While none of these approaches address all the domains sufficiently, together they have the potential to carry out exposure assessments that would complement each other and could advance the state-of-science towards more accurate risk analysis. The aim of our study is to give researchers investigating health effects of drinking water quality the impetus to consider how their exposure assessments relate to the above-mentioned domains and whether it would be worthwhile to integrate the advanced technologies presented into planned risk analyses. We highly suggest this three-pronged approach should be further evaluated in health risk analyses, especially epidemiological studies concerning contaminants in drinking water. The state of the knowledge regarding potential benefits of these technologies, especially when applied in tandem, provides more than sufficient evidence to support future research to determine the implications of combining the approaches described in our case studies in terms of protection of public health.

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Fig. 1: Domains for assessing exposure design in drinking water health studies and example questions researchers could consider before implementation.
Fig. 2: Chemicals prioritization to assess chemical threats to aquatic ecosystems and human health from water reuse.

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Notes

  1. Environmental Risk Assessment of Per- and Polyflouroalkyl Substances (PFAS). SETAC North America Focused Topic Meeting 12–15 August 2019, Durham, NC, USA. pfas.setac.org

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the organizers (Dr Cristina Villanueva and Dr Nicole C. Deziel) and participants of the workshop “Advancing the Science for Drinking Water Chemical Exposure Assessment and Health Research”, held at ISGlobal Barcelona 15-16 September 2022, in which JS, DC, PGF and JRN participated and which was the initiation of this collaborative work.

Funding

No financial assistance was received in support of this study. PGF acknowledges his Ramón y Cajal fellowship (RYC2019-027913-I) from the AEI-MICI. JS is supported by BERTHA—the Danish Big Data Center for Environment and Health funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation Challenge Programme (grant NNF17OC0027864).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environment, Occupation and Health, Department of Public Health, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Jörg Schullehner

  2. Danish Big Data Centre for Environment and Health (BERTHA), Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Jörg Schullehner

  3. Barcelona Institute for Global Health, Barcelona, Spain

    Dora Cserbik

  4. Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research—Spanish Council of Scientific Research (IDAEA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain

    Pablo Gago-Ferrero

  5. Department of Biomedicine and Veterinary Public Health, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden

    Johan Lundqvist

  6. Emeritus Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    John R. Nuckols

  7. Principal, JRN Environmental Health Sciences, Ltd, North Bethesda, MD, USA

    John R. Nuckols

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  3. Pablo Gago-Ferrero
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  4. Johan Lundqvist
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  5. John R. Nuckols
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Contributions

JS, PGF and JRN conceived the idea. DS conducted the literature search. JS and DC wrote the original draft, case studies were written by JS (1), PGF (2) and JL (3). JRN served as senior advisor/editor and contributed to the Discussion section. All authors reviewed and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jörg Schullehner.

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Competing interests

JL is a co-founder and owner of BioCell Analytica Uppsala AB, a company providing effect-based testing services to the water sector. The other authors report no competing interests.

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Schullehner, J., Cserbik, D., Gago-Ferrero, P. et al. Integrating different tools and technologies to advance drinking water quality exposure assessments. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol 34, 108–114 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-023-00588-0

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