Bird Flu Viruses Unlikely to Endure Water Treatment, Study Says
Jan. 3 (Bloomberg)—Bird flu viruses are unlikely to survive sewerage and drinking water treatment systems, making it doubtful contaminated feces could infect plant workers and spread through tap water, scientists at Cornell University said.
The researchers studied a low-pathogenic H5N2 avian influenza virus, which they said resembles the lethal H5N1 strain circulating in Asia and Africa. Water treatments, including chlorination, ultraviolet radiation and bacterial digesters killed the microbes, said Araceli Lucio-Forster, a microbiologist at Ithaca, New York-based Cornell.
The finding may reduce concerns about drinking water as a mode of infection during a pandemic. World health officials say the H5N1 flu virus, which has killed 157 people since 2003, may spark a global outbreak if it mutates to become as infectious to humans as seasonal flu.
``You have some 50,000 treatment plants in the U.S., and all these operators that run the plants were concerned that if there were an influenza outbreak and everyone were sick, is it going to come into the plant and infect them and others?’’ Dwight Bowman, a professor of parasitology at Cornell and co- author of the study, said yesterday in a prepared statement.
It is unknown if H5N1 is more resistant than H5N2 to procedures used by the water management industry, Lucio-Forster said. H5N2 was used as a surrogate virus because it can be studied in lower-level biosafety facilities, she said.
Given the similarities between the two viruses, if H5N1 entered the water treatment system, ``the virus should be inactivated, which means treated water may not be a likely source of transmission,’’ Lucio-Forster said.
Scientists are tracing the pathways by which a pandemic influenza virus could spread to identify potential risks.