AWWA WQTC55204

There are more than 100 enteric viruses that could be transmitted by water and are different in terms of size, genomic material, and protein capsid and presence or absence of an outer envelope. However, reliable data on virus inactivation by UV irradiation are limited to only several enteric viruses and few bacteriophages, and there seems to be a wide spectrum of sensitivity to UV irradiation by those viruses. With more enteric viruses and other microorganisms emerging as newly recognized waterborne pathogens, it would be beneficial to elucidate the major factors influencing virus sensitivity to UV irradiation. Therefore, selected several waterborne pathogenic viruses and bacteriophages were selected that had different sizes and genomic materials - three small RNA viruses (poliovirus 1, Coxsackievirus B4, and bacteriophage MS2) and three relatively large DNA viruses (Adenovirus 2, and two DNA bacteriophages, members of the Podoviridae and Myoviridae family) and the kinetics and extent of their inactivation was determined by various doses of monochromatic, low-pressure (LP) UV. The purpose of studying these representative viruses was to determine the relationships of virus size and genomic material to their sensitivity to UV irradiation. Includes 10 references, figures.