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Home Resources News In the News ER visits for gastro illnesses spike after heavy rains, study finds.
ER visits for gastro illnesses spike after heavy rains, study finds.
Written by Thea Edwards   
Wednesday, 01 September 2010 16:07
Heavy rainfall can lead to an 11 percent increase in children's emergency room visits for gastro illnesses, suggesting microbes from sewage may contaminate drinking water supplies.

During heavy rainfall, disease-causing microbes usually relegated to sewage water can enter surface or ground water used for drinking and drive up emergency room visits for gastrointestinal problems, say researchers who compared children's hospital visits and rainfall for five years in Wisconsin.

The exposures through drinking water could be an important - and perhaps underestimated - path that makes kids ill.  In the United States, each year, there are approximately 19 million cases of gastrointestinal illness that are potentially related to contamination of public drinking water systems.  Diarrhea, vomiting, and other stomach problems are common types of gastrointestinal illness.  Because global climate change is expected to cause heavier precipitation in some areas, it is important to understand the link between more rain and increased incidence of waterborne disease.

Viruses, and to a lesser degree, bacteria are the main causes of gastrointestinal illness among children. These microbes are found in waterways used for drinking water, and their numbers increase following storms, the researchers explain in their paper.

The microbes can get into public drinking water through storm water run-off from land or overflowing sewer pipes. They can also move from sewer pipes to water pipes when pipes have small leaks and are close together. This can occur in areas with older municipal water delivery systems or household plumbing.

In this study, researchers reviewed 17,357 visits to the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin Emergency Department for gastrointestinal illness between 2002 and 2007. They also collected daily rainfall totals for that period. They considered a lag of up to seven days from the time of the rain event to the emergency room visit to allow for the illness to develop.

There were an average of 8.1 children’s emergency room visits per day for gastrointestinal disease four days after rainfall compared to an average of 7.3 visits following days without rain.  Thus, rainfall four days before led to an 11 percent increase in gastrointestinal illness that required a visit to the emergency room.

Rainfall can promote contamination of drinking water supplies by increasing water flow from contaminated sources – such as sewage – to clean water, the authors conclude. Their results show that microbial contamination increases the risk of waterborne gastrointestinal illness for people using public drinking water supplies.  Better monitoring, improved management of sewage and storm water, increased treatment, and boil alerts may be needed to lower the illnesses associated with heavy rains.