The American Public Health Association’s (APHA) new Fluoridation Position Statement is based on many documents that neither support nor evaluate fluoridation’s safety and/or effectiveness as it claims (1).

A new University of Georgia study suggests that health agencies investigating Salmonella illnesses should consider untreated surface water as a possible source of contamination.

Researchers have developed a new technique using sensors to constantly monitor the health of bacteria critical to wastewater treatment facilities and have verified a theory that copper is vital to the proper functioning of a key enzyme in the bacteria.

Cholera is a major killer and since the first pandemic in the early 19th century it has claimed millions of lives. According to Amit Lerner from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, the lethal infection is harboured by an equally infamous insect: chironomids (midges). Lerner explains that the females contaminate water sources with the deadly bacteria when laying their eggs.

NOAA scientists today released a 20-year study showing that environmental laws enacted in the 1970s are having a positive effect on reducing overall contaminant levels in coastal waters of the U.S. However, the report points to continuing concerns with elevated levels of metals and organic contaminants found near urban and industrial areas of the coasts.

The end of April usually brings the first signs of harmful algae in New England waters, and this year, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and North Carolina State University (NC State) are preparing for a potentially big bloom.

In 2002, Bruce Rittmann, PhD, director of the Biodesign Institute’s Center for Environmental Biotechnology, received a patent for an innovative way to use nature to lend society a hand. He invented a treatment system, called the membrane biofilm reactor (MBfR), which uses naturally occurring microorganisms to remove contaminants from water.

It is clear that the health of our ocean and coastal environment is intimately linked to our health. New ocean and coastal related diseases are emerging. Our beaches and coastal waters are increasingly contaminated.

MIT researchers have found that the children of mothers whose water supplies were contaminated with arsenic during their pregnancies harbored gene expression changes that may lead to cancer and other diseases later in life.

Exposing estrogen-sensitive breast cancer cells to extracts of channel catfish caught in areas with heavy sewer and industrial waste causes the cells to multiply, according to a University of Pittsburgh study being presented at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in Washington, D.C. The abstract, number 159141, will be presented at a special session on “Contaminants in Freshwater Fish: Toxicity, Sources and Risk Communication,”

Water or food of natural origins (from plants or animals) that we consume on a daily basis can contain unwanted ‘supplies’ for our organism, such as pesticides or antibiotics.

Bathing beaches and lakes could fail the new cleanliness standards set by the 2006 Bathing Waters Directive, but a new risk assessment tool developed by rural studies and water management experts may help reduce the transfer of disease causing bacteria from the farmed environment, according to scientists speaking today at the Society for General Microbiology’s 161st Meeting at the University of Edinburgh, UK, which runs from 3-6 September 2007.