The continued lack of access to adequate amounts of safe drinking water is one of the primary causes of infant morbidity and mortality worldwide and a serious situation which governments, international agencies and private organizations are striving to alleviate. Barriers to providing safe drinking water for rural areas and small communities that must be overcome include the financing and stability of small systems, their operation, and appropriate, cost-effective technologies to treat and deliver water to consumers. While we know how to technically produce safe drinking water, we are not always able to achieve sustainable safe water supplies for small systems in developed and developing countries. Everyone wants to move rapidly to reach the goal of universal safe drinking water, because safe water is the most fundamental essential element for personal and social health and welfare. Without safe water and a safe environment, sustained personal economic and cultural development is impossible. Often small rural systems are the last in the opportunity line. Safe Drinking Water in Small Systems describes feasible technologies, operating procedures, management, and financing opportunities to alleviate problems faced by small water systems in both developed and developing countries. In addition to widely used traditional technologies this reference presents emerging technologies and non-traditional approaches to water treatment, management, sources of energy, and the delivery of safe water.

This book examines, in both a current and historical context, water-related illness in the U.S. Emphasis is placed upon the transmission of infectious diseases through contaminated drinking water supplies and those deficiencies in water supply systems which allow waterborne outbreaks to occur. Chapters have been included on the important etiologic agents responsible for waterborne outbreaks in the U.S., surveillance activities, regulations, water treatment to prevent the occurrence of waterborne outbreaks and procedures for investigating waterborne outbreaks. For completeness, discussion have been included on illnesses contracted by ingestion of contact with waters for bathing , swimming, or wading and chronic ingestion of low levels of chemical contaminants in drinking water; however, because of space limitations there are necessarily brief, and the reader is directed toward the provided references, which discuss these subjects in more depth.

An Introduction to Environmental Epidemiology covers the basics of environmental exposure, health, and disease. Written to be easily accessible to readers with no formal training in epidemiology or statistics, this practical introduction is an ideal text/reference for students and professionals in nursing, medicine, industrial hygiene, occupational and environmental health, and general environmental science. It provides a target-organ oriented presentation of environmental hazards, with detailed discussions of selected exposures such as asbestos, lead, radon, and indoor and outdoor air pollutants. Major topics covered include: