Drinking water turbidity and health.

Last year, we published a study showing an association between daily measures of drinking water turbidity (a measure of the clarity of water) in Philadelphia and emergency visits and admissions to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for gastrointestinal illness, controlling for time trends, seasonal patterns, and temperature. The study covered 5 years, 1989 to 1993.1 In response to the paper, managers and technical staff from the Philadel? phia Water Department and from the U.S. Environmen? tal Protection Agency (EPA) wrote extremely lengthy criticisms (EPA internal memorandum dated February 19, 1998 from W. Diamond and J. Wiltse to R. Levin on EPA Peer Review of Article Linking Finished Water Turbidity with Gastrointestinal Disease in Philadel? phia). The criticisms were sweeping; for example,

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[2]  R. Morris,et al.  A PERSISTENT ASSOCIATION BETWEEN WATER QUALITY AND GASTROENTERITIS IN MILWAUKEE DESPITE IMPROVEMENTS IN WATER TREATMENT , 1998 .

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[5]  O. Ravenholt,et al.  Cryptosporidiosis: An Outbreak Associated with Drinking Water Despite State-of-the-Art Water Treatment , 1996, Annals of Internal Medicine.

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[12]  Ramon G. Lee,et al.  How Preoxidation Affects Particle Removal During Clarification and Filtration , 1992 .

[13]  Vincent S. Hart,et al.  An Analysis of Low‐Level Turbidity Measurements , 1992 .

[14]  Mark W. LeChevallier,et al.  Examining Relationships Between Particle Counts and Giardia, Cryptosporidium, and Turbidity , 1992 .

[15]  Desmond F. Lawler,et al.  Contact Filtration: Particle Size and Ripening , 1992 .

[16]  Ramon G. Lee,et al.  Giardia and Cryptosporidium spp. in filtered drinking water supplies , 1991, Applied and environmental microbiology.

[17]  C Poole,et al.  Multiple comparisons? No problem! , 1991, Epidemiology.

[18]  K J Rothman,et al.  No Adjustments Are Needed for Multiple Comparisons , 1990, Epidemiology.

[19]  J. Rose,et al.  Large community outbreak of cryptosporidiosis due to contamination of a filtered public water supply. , 1989, The New England journal of medicine.

[20]  T. Eng,et al.  Epidemic giardiasis caused by a contaminated public water supply. , 1988, American journal of public health.

[21]  W. Jakubowski,et al.  Drinking Water Transmission of Giardiasis in the United States , 1986 .