By: Astrid Salcedo
Graphical abstract depicting the effects of heavy rainfall following dry periods on stomach health. Image taken from Shichao Du et al. 2024
In Texas, when it rains, it pours especially in recent years where climate change has caused more frequent and high levels of rainfall following dry periods. The study conducted by Shichao and colleagues throughout Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin is important since stomach illnesses are not widely considered to be associated with heavy rainfall. Shichao and colleagues detected high levels of infectious agents on surface water in the two weeks following an extreme rainfall event. Even though Houston had the highest average daily rainfall, a discrepancy in Shichao and colleagues' data showed that Dallas had the highest stomach-illness-related hospitalizations which is most likely attributed to the city sourcing 100% of its drinking water from surface water. Stomach illness hospitalizations were higher among children ages 6 and under due to more exposure to recreational water sources including public swimming pools and waterparks. These findings provide further information on how extreme weather events directly affect human health while emphasizing the need for alternative water sources to prevent contaminated sewage water from entering drinking water sources. The tradeoff to finding other potable water sources is the significant time it would take to find and establish the source and the possibility of taking away other cities' resources. Since extreme rainfall events are expected to increase, these alarming results highlight the need to improve sustainable and adaptable strategies to support a future with fewer hospital visits caused by rain.
Original Article:
Du S, Chien LC, Bush KF, Giri S, Richardson LA, Li M, Jin Q, Li T, Nicklett EJ, Li R, Zhang K. 2024. Short-term associations between precipitation and gastrointestinal illness-related hospital admissions: A multi-city study in Texas. SOTTE Journal 951:1-9.
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