AIDS Transmission in Drinking Water: No Threat

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the pathogen that causes AIDS in humans, can be transmitted in five ways:sexual contact with an infected individual; needle sharing by infected, intravenous drug users; transfusions of infected blood; exposure of wounds or cuts to the blood or body fluids of infected persons; and in utero transmission to infants by infected mothers. There is no evidence that HIV can be transmitted via a waterborne route. A severe disease syndrome began to appear in the United States and other countries in 1981. The principal characteristic of the syndrome was a compromised immune system, and thus the disease became known as the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Clusters of cases were soon identified, and it became evident that more than 90 percent of the cases occurred in adults who were homosexual or bisexual men, intravenous drug users, or sexual partners of persons in these groups. The syndrome is characterized by unexplained weight loss or prolonged unexplained fever or both; chronic generalized lymphadenopathy; Kaposi’s sarcoma (in patients less than 60 years of age); and opportunistic infections that are not associated with underlyingimmunosup pressive disease or therapy.’ The fact that homosexual men were the first patients to be observed with the illness suggested that the infectious agent was sexually transmitted or that exposure to a common environment had a critical role in the pathogenesis and establishment of the immunodeficient state.2,” Even at that time, epidemiologic evidence suggested that the putative agent causing AIDS did not appear to be easily transmitted to anyone other than those who came into close contact with the blood or blood products of a victim of the disease.J It was not until 1983 that a T-lymphotropic retrovirus was isolated from an AIDS patient in France;” the isolation of similar viruses in the United States followed shortly.6.7 The virus was designated as lymphadenopathy-associated virus (LAV) by the French workers, as