Access to safe drinking water for Nunavik communities can be limited in terms of quantity and quality. Water is particularly vulnerable to contamination. Most communities use water trucks to distribute drinking water, which is stored in domestic tanks. This method can favor bacterial regrowth due to a long storage time exacerbated by a low residual chlorine level in water, as a large proportion of the population does not like the taste of chlorine.
Many communities are often subject to boil water advisories (BWA), often due to mechanical or operational failure of water systems. However, these frequent BWAs impact population’s confidence in the quality of the water distributed and encourage alternative consumption habits (e.g. drinking from traditional untreated natural water sources). Because of this limited confidence, the population often blames the quality of household water for the health problems (diarrhea and skin problems) present in the population. However, it is difficult to confirm any causality, as multiple factors can cause these problems, unrelated to drinking water. Also, the practice of drinking water transportation and storage or untreated natural water consumption can expose the population to water-borne diseases. Providing trusted and confident data to the community might increase their perception of the safety of their water and improve water consumption practices.
The goal of this project is to investigate drinking water safety by co-developing a long-term water quality monitoring program with communities of both treated water stored in houses and untreated natural waters to protect the population against water-borne diseases. To this end, this project will combine traditional water chemistry characterization with the microbiological characterization of samples by genomics (e.g., 16S rRNA gene sequencing, whole genome sequencing for the detection of antimicrobial resistance, virulence genes), microbial source tracking for identifying fecal contamination sources, targeted viral pathogens).