Investigating viruses in sea, river and estuary water

Blog post by Dr Jessica Kevill

 

We’ve all heard a lot recently about pollution in river and seawater, and how this is affecting our health. As an environmental virologist, my job is to find out what viruses are present and how they adapt and change.

My work at BlueAdapt involves creating prediction models that can reduce the risks for all of us who love the water. I live near the North coast of Wales, my family and I love to go to the beach. But knowing the risks associated with wastewater contamination has made me a bit more wary about where we go swimming. My role for BlueAdapt is to find out more about the viruses in our environment and how they’re being affected by changes to our climate.

How are we studying waterborne viruses?

Recently me and the team from Bangor University, have been going out to collect samples of sea, river and estuary water to see what’s in there. This gives us a useful snapshot of which viruses are present. Now, what we need to understand is how these viruses persist under certain conditions, such as changes to the water temperature, salinity levels or pH levels.

To help us understand this we’ve set up some experiments called “microcosm experiments”. These involve taking sea, river and estuarine water samples, looking at what pathogens are already present, then spiking the samples with known quantities of viruses.

To do this, we have to purchase live viruses and follow strict measures to test them. To start with we are investigating the effect of temperature on the viruses. How do the viruses change at 10oC (average seawater temperature), 20oC (the current highest sea temperatures) and higher temperatures of up to 30oC (predicted sea temperature rises)?

Spiking seawater with viruses

We spiked the sea water with the relevant viruses and made aliquots (sub-samples from the main sample), which have gone into incubators set at 10oC, 20oC and 30oc. These samples are checked at intervals to see if the viruses degrade with time and whether they remain infectious.
This data is fed into computer models, which can be used to predict virus behaviour in the natural environment. This will enable us to forecast the risk to human health.

We’re already getting helpful data through. The initial findings are quite broad, so we can work out from this what areas we need to focus in on. For example, we’ve already seen that the water temperature has an impact on the viruses: what’s the effect when we take UV and salinity levels into account? I think we’re going to busy for quite a while!

How will our research help to keep people safe?

There are more and more reports of contamination in rivers and the sea, and we don’t always understand the level of risk to humans until someone becomes sick. Even then, there’s a five-day lag. This is where our computer modelling comes in.

If we have computer models that are robust and accurate, we can make predictions and let people know about potential risks before they get sick. This way, we can protect people from waterborne viruses.

Some of the pathogens we get are relatively mild; however, as we learned from the pandemic, we really don’t know what’s around the corner. Also, with climate change, there’s a risk that we could end up with some tropical diseases coming to our shores that we’re just not prepared for. Climate change is another thing to consider and be prepared for (hence why we’re looking into higher water temperatures).

Here at Bangor University, we have strong relationships with public health bodies in Wales and England. By creating models that provide real-time predictions, we can inform policymakers about the risks of harmful waterborne viruses.

I’ll be honest: the current wastewater contamination problems have impacted my day-to-day life, and I don’t enjoy swimming at our local beaches anymore. The BlueAdapt project is coming up with solutions that will predict the behaviour of harmful viruses in our waters and help to reduce the risks to human health.

About me

I’m Dr Jessica Kevill, a Postdoctoral Researcher in Environmental Virology at the School of Natural Sciences at Bangor University. I’m working on the BlueAdapt project as an environmental virologist, looking specifically at how viruses present in the environment change under different conditions.

My interest in environmental science started at a young age, from watching climate change reports on kids’ programmes like BBC’s Newsround. I began keeping bees while I was studying for my first degree and became interested in the viruses that they can get. This led to a PhD, followed by research into veterinary viruses, then full-circle back to studying viruses within a climate change context. My advice is if you have an interest, follow it!