Floors and Toilets: Association of Floors and Sanitation Practices with Fecal Contamination in Peruvian Amazon Peri-Urban Households
Year: 2016
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Over two billion people worldwide lack access to an improved sanitation facility that adequately retains or treats feces. This results in the potential for fecal material containing enteric pathogens to contaminate the environment, including household floors. This study aimed to assess how floor type and sanitation practices impacted the concentration of fecal contamination on household floors. We sampled 189 floor surfaces within 63 households in a peri-urban community in Iquitos, Peru. All samples were analyzed for colony forming units (CFUs) of E. coli, and households were evaluated for their water, sanitation, and hygiene characteristics. Results of multivariate linear regression indicated that households with improved sanitation and cement floors in the kitchen area had reduced fecal contamination to those with unimproved sanitation and dirt floors (Beta: -1.18 log10 E. coli CFU/900 cm(2); 95% confidence interval [CI]: -1.77, -0.60). Households that did not versus did share their sanitation facility also had less contaminated kitchen floors (Beta: -0.65 log10 E. coli CFU/900 cm(2); 95% CI: -1.15, -0.16). These findings suggest that the sanitation facilities of a home may impact the microbial load found on floors, contributing to the potential for household floors to serve as an indirect route of fecal pathogen transmission to children.
Institutions: Johns Hopkins University, Prisma
Language: English
Subfield: Water Science and Technology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Morris Animal Foundation, American Kennel Club Canine Health Foundation, Thrasher Research Fund, National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, NIH Office of the Director, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health
Awards: G2719538425, G3270741337, G4312368353, G538211920, G5423102385, G5501753981, G5667073246, G6077025245, G7676226881, IGERT: Water, Climate, and Health, Non-invasive zoonotic pathogen exposure and outcome biomarkers with follow-up in, G9000029503, Participatory Interventions to Reduce Arsenic in American Indian Communities, The impact of intensive livestock production on the disease ecology of antibiotic resistant staphylococcus
OpenAlex ID: W2471247936