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<li>Develop sensitive techniques to detect and identify emerging human waterborne pathogenic viruses and viruses on the CCL.</li>
<li>Determine effectiveness of viral indicators to measure microbial quality in water matrices.</li></ol>
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Support activities:<ol>
<li> culture and distribution of mammalian cells for Agency and scientific community research needs, </li>
<li> provide operator expertise for research requiring confocal and electron microscopy, </li>
<li> glassware cleaning, sterilization and biological waste disposal for the Cincinnati EPA facility,</li>
<li> operation of infectious pathogenic suite,</li>
<li> maintenance of walk-in constant temperature rooms and</li> <li> provide Giardia cysts. </li></ol>
Research is conducted to develop and standardize methods to detect and measure occurrence of human enteric viruses that cause waterborne disease. The viruses of concern include the emerging pathogens--hepatitis E virus and group B rotaviruses. Also of concern are the coxsackieviruses and echoviruses--two members of the Office of Water's Contaminant Candidate List (CCL). Under this task, indicators of fecal pollution are also being evaluated as to their importance in evaluating microbial water quality. Another focus of the research is to address the standardization, evaluation and promulgation of detection methods for bacterial viruses.