Impacts of sanitation upgrading to the decrease of fecal coliforms entering into the environment in China

Yindong Tong; Ruihua Yao; Wei He; Feng Zhou; Cen Chen; Xianhua Liu; Yiren Lu; Wei Zhang; Xuejun Wang; Yan Lin; Min Zhou

doi:10.1016/j.envres.2016.05.009

Impacts of sanitation upgrading to the decrease of fecal coliforms entering into the environment in China

Environ Res. 2016 Aug:149:57-65. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2016.05.009. Epub 2016 May 12.

Authors

Yindong Tong¹, Ruihua Yao², Wei He³, Feng Zhou⁴, Cen Chen⁵, Xianhua Liu⁶, Yiren Lu⁶, Wei Zhang⁷, Xuejun Wang³, Yan Lin⁸, Min Zhou⁹

Affiliations

¹ School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300000, China; Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, Beijing 100012, China. Electronic address: yindongtong@tju.edu.cn.
² Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, Beijing 100012, China. Electronic address: yaorh@caep.org.cn.
³ College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
⁴ College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China; Institute of Integrated Watershed Management, Sino-France Institute of Earth Systems Science, Laboratory for Earth Surface, Beijing 100871, China.
⁵ Tianjin Environmental Sanitation Engineering Design Institute, Tianjin 300000, China.
⁶ School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300000, China.
⁷ School of Environment and Natural Resources, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China.
⁸ Norwegian Institute for Water Research, Oslo 0349, Norway.
⁹ College of Public Administration, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.

PMID: 27179203
DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2016.05.009

Abstract

Identifying the sanitation efficacy of reducing fecal contaminations in the environment is important for evaluating health risks of the public and developing future management strategies to improve sanitation conditions. In this study, we estimated the fecal coliforms (FC) entering into the environment in 31 provinces in China under three sanitation scenarios. Our calculation results indicated that, the current FC release is disparate among regions, and the human releases in the rural regions were dominant, accounting for over 90% of the total human releases. Compared with the human release, the FC release from the livestock was of similar magnitude, but has a quite different spatial distribution. In China Women's Development Program, the Chinese government set the target to make over 85% of the population in the rural access to the toilets in 2020. If the target set by the Chinese government is achieved, a decrease of 34% (12-54%) in the FC releases would be anticipated. In the future, the improvement in sanitation and accesses to the safe drinking water in the less developed regions, such as Tibet, Qinghai, and Ningxia, should be considered as a priority.

Keywords: Fecal coliforms; Feces; Human release; Rural; Sanitation upgrading.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Bacterial Physiological Phenomena*
China
Feces / microbiology*
Humans
Livestock
Models, Theoretical
Sanitation*
Water Microbiology*