Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment

The new edition of this book is an outgrowth of an independent research center established by the United States Department of Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency, dedicated to advancing laboratory techniques, creating mathematical tools, and developing datasets needed to improve Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment (QMRA).  This book looks at the latest methodologies to quantify at every step of the microbial exposure pathways, from the first release of a pathogen to the actual human infection.   It provides techniques on how to  gather information, on how each microorganism moves through the environment, how to determine their survival rates on various media, and how people are exposed to the microorganism (i.e. skin contact, inhalation, or ingestion).  The book explains how these measurements can give us a comprehensive view of how environmental contamination (deliberate or accidental) can lead to human infection and reveals key points where interventions can be employed to save lives.  Since QMRA allows the reader to incorporate interventions into risk estimates, the book explains how QMRA can be used as a tool to measure the impact of interventions and identify the best policies and practices to protect public health and safety.

Preface 1. Motivation 2. Microbial Agents and Transmission 3. Risk Assessment Paradigms 4. Conducting the Hazard Identification (HAZ ID) 5. Analytical Methods and the QMRA Framework: Developing Occurrence and Exposure Databases 6. Exposure Assessment 7. Predictive Microbiology 8. Conducting the Dose Response Assessment 9. Uncertainty 10. Population Disease Transmission 11. Risk Characterization and Decision Making

Charles N. Haas is the head of the department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at Drexel University and the Betz Chair Professor of Environmental Engineering.  He has served on numerous advisory committees of the US EPA and the National Research Council Joan Rose serves as the Homer Nowlin Chair in Water Research at Michigan State University, the Co–Director of the Center for Advancing Microbial Risk Assessment (CAMRA) and the Director of the Center for Water Sciences (CWS).  She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Charles P. Gerba is a Professor in the department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science at the University of Arizona. He is the author of 11 books and over 400 journal papers. Dr. Gerba is a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency′s Science Advisory Board Committees on Drinking Water and Research Strategies.