Human health, economic, and environmental impacts of emergency drinking water contamination events and response actions

This study investigated various drinking water emergency countermeasures, evaluating their economic, environmental, and public health tradeoffs during contamination events. Employing process-based dynamic modeling and life cycle assessment methodologies, we assessed the effectiveness of 10 countermeasure deployment scenarios applied to a surrogate drinking water system. Our analysis indicates that the impacts of deployed countermeasures during emergency contamination can vary dramatically depending on the conditions of water supply, water demand, and the response time taken. While facility shutdown presents high effectiveness from all three aspects under the low demand and high supply condition, tradeoffs were found between economic and health/environmental impacts under the high demand and low supply condition, indicating that it is more costly to achieve the desired public health protection under the latter condition. Decision-makers must fully comprehend the impacts and benefits of countermeasure deployment, recognizing the tradeoffs between health, economic, and environmental considerations.