3.1 Evaluation of your assessment of the risk of cyanobacterial
proliferation and your
system’s performance in controlling it
You have assessed the risk of
cyanobacterial proliferation in your water-body. To evaluate this assessment,
please check which colours you marked most frequently in the questionnaire.
Note: The outcome of this assessment supports you in
positioning the human health risk from cyanotoxins in relation to other health
risks from exposure to the same water in a matrix for relative ranking of health
risks. This is a basis for setting priorities in controlling these risks.
·
Option A
You
almost only marked green fields:
Your risk of cyanobacterial proliferation is low, and all you need to do is to
make sure you can maintain this good situation.
Therefore, the next important
step is: to identify the control
measures in your catchment which currently are decisive for this level of
safety and should have priority for maintenance and operational monitoring. For
these, you should develop a management plan which would particularly define the
operational monitoring for parameters that indicate the potential for problems
and thus provide an early warning for changes towards conditions conducive for
cyanobacterial proliferation.
è Continue with documentation.
·
Option B
You
have frequently marked orange or red fields: Your risk of cyanobacterial
proliferation is moderate to high.
1. Immediate
assessment of your raw water offtake strategy and/or drinking-water treatment
system is important in order to assess the risk of intake of cells and
breakthrough of cyanotoxins, i.e. how effective the barriers are that you have
in place at these stages of your supply system.
è Continue with
Part II of the Questionnaire:
Assessment of the risk of cyanotoxin intake and breakthrough in treatment
2. If the water-body
is used for recreation, particularly involving water contact sports, you have
no further barriers (like drinking-water treatment), and your only line of
defence is to keep people out of the water during blooms through adequate
public information. You can link here to a template flyer for informing site users and a flyer for medical professionals. Temporary
closure at sites may also be adequate, e.g. in the context of an early
warning and emergency response plan.
3. For long-term
safety, it is advised to assess whether and how cyanobacterial proliferation
could be controlled more effectively.
See è Control measures in the catchment
and è Control measures in the water-body
for suggestions of options to look at; check if any of them might be
implemented in your setting and should be included in your Water Safety Plan.
You have frequently marked grey fields:
the uncertainty of your assessment is high due to lack of information. The risk of cyanotoxin occurrence therefore
cannot be safely excluded.
1. Immediate
assessment of your raw water offtake strategy and/or drinking-water treatment
system is important in order to assess the risk of intake of cells and
breakthrough of cyanotoxins in case cyanobacterial proliferation does occur,
i.e. how effective the barriers are that you have in place at these downstream
stages of your supply system.
è Continue with Part
II of the Questionaire: Assessment of the risk of cyanotoxin intake and
breakthrough in treatment
2. If the water-body
is used for recreation, particularly involving water contact sports, you have
no further barriers (like drinking-water treatment), and your only line of
defence is to keep people out of the water during blooms through adequate
public information. You can link here to a template flyer
for informing site users and a flyer for
medical professionals. Temporary closure at sites may also be adequate,
e.g. in the context of an early warning and
emergency response plan.
3. It is advised to
assess whether decisions on implementing new control measures or upgrading ones
can already be made on the basis of the information available, or whether this
risks misguided investment, and the first priority should be to collect the
missing information.
4. For long-term
safety, it is advised to assess whether and how cyanobacterial proliferation
could be controlled.
See è Control measures in the catchment
and è Control measures in the water-body for suggestions
of options to look at and see if any of them might be implemented in your
setting and should be included in your your Water Safety Plan.
On to è Questionnaire: Assessment of the risk of
cyanotoxin intake and breakthrough
Back to è Assessing risks and the system’s
performance in controlling them
Back to è START