As blue-green algae proliferates around the world, a University of Saskatchewan (USask) researcher cautions that current municipal drinking water monitoring that focuses on a single toxin associated with the cyanobacteria blooms is likely to miss the true public health risks.
As blue-green algae proliferates around the world, a University of Saskatchewan (USask) researcher cautions that current municipal drinking water monitoring that focuses on a single toxin associated with the cyanobacteria blooms is likely to miss the true public health risks.
“We typically test only for microcystin in drinking water, but the toxicity risk is greater than that one toxin,” said Helen Baulch, an associate professor at USask’s School of Environment and Sustainability.
National drinking water guidelines require that treatment plants test only for microcystin, the most common toxin found in blue-green blooms. Although microcystin varieties are detected fairly frequently through treatment plant monitoring, their levels rarely exceed drinking water thresholds, she said.
But using some advanced analytical chemistry that goes beyond traditional testing, her team was surprised to find other toxins in some cyanobacteria-affected lakes, with a variety of modes of action and toxicity, among them a deadly variety known as anatoxin. The concentration of these toxins was low enough not to pose a current health risk, but their presence alone concerns Baulch.
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Image via University of Saskatchewan.
