Readings Ensuring Safe Drinking Water: Learning From Frontline Experience With Contamination
LATITUDE
published in regular literature. This is stuff that you dig out from people’s filing cabinets,” Dr. Hrudey tells the American Water Works Association in a video interview on its website. “After the fact, everybody gets to be a Monday-morning quarterback and say, You should have known better. But until you see what was happening through the eyes of the people experi- encing it, you don’t understand it.” Two high-profile cases from Canada are examined in the book: the May 2000 E. coli outbreak in Walkerton, Ont., which killed seven people and made another 2,300 ill, and a cryptosporidium parasite outbreak less than a year later in North Battleford, Sask., that left up to 7,000 people ill and many hospitalized. But Canada certainly isn’t the only developed nation to experience tainted water scandals. The book looks at cases from across the world, including the United States, Scotland, Finland, Switzerland, England, Sweden, and Australia. Twelve of these cases occurred after the Walkerton tragedy. “Humans inevitably make mistakes,” write the authors. “The focus of reviewing a failure needs to be on how a system allowed a simple mistake or set of mistakes to have disastrous consequences. If we are to reduce failures and minimize consequences, we must have systems (including effective monitoring checks and balances) that can accommodate human error without allowing catastrophic outcomes.” While the book was written to be an educational tool for frontline waterworks personal, operators and their managers — the people who are directly responsible for delivering safe drinking water to their communities — anyone entrusted with drinking water safety will gain valuable insights and knowledge that could help prevent similar failures in the future. This includes Professional Engineers, regulators, public health officials, utility board members, commissioners, and politicians.
Each case study is presented with a general description of the setting along with: • an account of events as they unfolded • a description of what happened, with the benefit of investigation and hindsight • the consequences • questions to ponder about how each
case applies to the reader • a list of lessons learned
The authors shine the light on mistakes and examples of human failing, from simple oversights to intentional cover-ups and negligence. In some cases, their analysis also highlights a need for better training and changes to system design or working methods that can prevent incidents from happening. While each case is unique, similarities do occur. Readers are encouraged to consider what happened in each case and whether it could happen in their own systems. As the authors explain: “We want to help you avoid the kind of real and practical failures that are documented… The most dangerous reaction you can have is to decide that none of these things could ever happen to you or your system. The specific details of these cases may never occur exactly the same way again, but the common contributing factors pose a risk to any drinking water system.” Microbial pathogens from fecal matter, for example, are a widespread risk. They come from human, pet, livestock, or wildlife waste, and as the authors point out, there’s no place on Earth free from them. Chemical contamination, from water treatment chemicals or everyday products like diesel fuel or detergent, are also a common risk to water systems. Ensuring Safe Drinking Water is a follow-up to the authors’ 2004 publication, Safe Drinking Water: Lessons From Recent Outbreaks in Affluent Nations , which examined the causes, consequences, and lessons learned from 70 waterborne disease outbreaks in 15 developed nations, including an in-depth analysis of the Walkerton outbreak. The
By Dr. Steve E. Hrudey, P.Eng., FCAE, and Elizabeth J. Hrudey Available through the American Water Works Association (awwa.org) US $48 (AWWA members), US $62 (non-members) Canadians trust that drinking a glass of tap water won’t result in a trip to the emergency room — or worse. Fortunately, most municipalities in Canada have first-rate water treatment technology and cases of contaminated drinking water are rare. But as authors Dr. Steve E. Hrudey, P.Eng., FCAE, and his wife, Elizabeth J. Hrudey, note in their new book, Ensuring Safe Drinking Water: Learning From Frontline Experience With Contamination , human and technological failures do happen. In this book, 21 case studies are examined, including 10 waterborne disease outbreaks, seven chemical contaminations, and four close calls. Where possible, the book is written through the eyes of frontline personnel who were involved as events unfolded. “Basically, what did they know and when did they know it? This is not
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