RISK OF GASTROENTERITIS IN RURAL AREAS OF QUEBEC WITH INTENSIVE ANIMAL FARMING
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objectives Intensive animal farming is increasing in Quebec and there is some concern from the public and Medical Officers of Health that this could contaminate groundwater and potentially adversely affect health. According to phophorus's absorption by crops and vulnerability of groundwater, the province of Quebec has declared some rural areas in excess for production of animal manure. A moratorium on the construction of new hog farms was undertaken, and a study to evaluate the potential health impact of intensive animal farming in seven high risk watersheds was conducted. This study evaluated the risk of gastroenteritis in well water users in areas overloaded with manure versus controls using well water in non-overloaded rural areas. Methods 923 rural families living in sectors overloaded with manure (exposed group), and 241 rural families living in control sectors from the same watersheds were visited at home by a technician during Spring 2002. Water samples from each family's well were taken and analysed for Escherichia coli, entcroccocci, and male-specific coliphages. Water consumption habits and gastro-intestinal symptoms were measured by questionnaire for all family members for the week prior to the technician visit and a health diary was completed for the week following the visit. Risk factors for gastro-enteritis (age, gender, presence of chronic gastrointestinal illness, dietary habits, contact with animals and occupation) were assessed by questionnaire and were controlled for in the analysis. Results The period prevalence of highly credible gastro-enteritis (HCGI) and diarrhea was similar in the exposed compared to the control group: 9.5 % vs 9.6 % for HCGI (p = 0.93) and 3.2% vs 4.0% for diarrhea (p = 0.40). Among well water consumers, the adjusted Odds Ratio (OR) for exposure was 0.94 (95% CI: 0.64–1.38) for HCGI and 0.71 (95% Cl: 0.39–1.31) for diarrhea. Contamination of well water was rare and slightly lower in the exposed group: 1.3% vs 1.7% (p = 0.76) for E. coli, and 4.9% vs 7.9% for enterococci (p = 0.08). Contamination by male-specific coliphages was rarely found (0.1% vs 0.4%, p = 0.37). Prevalence of HCGI was lower in the second week of the study, and risk of gastro-enteritis during this period was higher in heads of families using contaminated water: 9.8% vs 2.9% for those using uncontaminated water (p = 0.014). Conclusion Contamination of groundwater by microbiological indicators at the time of the study was rare, and the risk of gastro-enteritis for well water users in areas overloaded with manure was not increased. Limits of this study include: sample size, time of sampling, prevalence data and assessment of the exposure to animal manure using a sector-level variable. Those limits should be taken into account when interpreting these results. Acknowledgements the Quebec ministries of Environment, Health and Agriculture funded this study.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".