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Establishing a spatial map of health risk assessment for recreational fishing in a highly urbanized watershed

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Abstract

Recreational fishing is a popular activity in many urbanized watersheds. When river water is incidentally ingested during fishing sessions, substantial waterborne fecal contamination can cause adverse health effects. This study aims to spatially map health risks for recreational fishers caused by waterborne Escherichia coli (E. coli) in the highly urbanized Tamsui River watershed. First, indicator kriging was used to probabilistically estimate the distributions of waterborne E. coli and determine the conditional cumulative distribution function (CCDF). Subsequently, to propagate the parameter variability, Monte Carlo simulation was adopted to characterize the ingestion rate and exposure duration for recreational fishers and E. coli realizations were generated using random fields on the basis of the estimated CCDF. Finally, after the three parameters were combined, the approximate beta-Poisson dose–response function was employed to quantitatively determine potential risks to recreational fishers in the Tamsui River and its tributaries. The analysis results revealed that the risks of recreational fishing exceed an acceptable level of 8 infections per 1000 fishers per day at several urban river courses. Therefore, recreational fishing activities in urban riverbanks pose a substantial health threat. Recreational fishing in urban riverbanks should be limited before the construction of complete sanitary sewer systems. The river mouth and certain upstream river sections are suitable for the development of recreational fishing.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration and the New Taipei City Government generously supporting the data on E. coli and the exposure duration for recreational fishers, respectively, in the Tamsui River watershed, and the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology for financially supporting this research under Contract Nos. MOST 104-2410-H-424-014 and MOST 105-2410-H-424-015.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Leisure and Recreation Management, Kainan University, Taoyuan City, 338, Taiwan

    Cheng-Shin Jang

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei City, 106, Taiwan

    Shih-Kai Chen

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  1. Cheng-Shin Jang
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Correspondence to Cheng-Shin Jang.

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Jang, CS., Chen, SK. Establishing a spatial map of health risk assessment for recreational fishing in a highly urbanized watershed. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 32, 685–699 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-017-1380-5

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