Author(s):
Brandão, João ; Valério, Elisabete ; Weiskerger, Chelsea ; Veríssimo, Cristina ; Sarioglou, Konstantina ; Novak Babič, Monika ; Solo-Gabriele, Helena M. ; Sabino, Raquel ; Rebelo, Maria Teresa
Date: 2023
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.18/8914
Origin: Repositório Científico do Instituto Nacional de Saúde
Subject(s): Sand Quality; FIB; Fungi; Mycosands; Public Health; Sand; Recreational Water; MST; Monitoring Program; Água e Solo; Agentes Microbianos e Ambiente; Infecções Sistémicas e Zoonoses
Description
The 2021 revised guidelines of the World Health Organization recommend monitoring the quality of sand in addition to water at recreational beaches. This review provides background information about the types of beaches, the characteristics of sand, and the microbiological parameters that should be measured. Analytical approaches are described for quantifying fungi and fecal indicator bacteria from beach sand. The review addresses strategies to assess beach sand quality, monitoring approaches, sand remediation, and the proposed way forward for beach sand monitoring programs. In the proposed way forward, recommendations are provided for acceptable levels of fungi given their distribution in the environment. Additional recommendations include evaluating FIB distributions at beaches globally to assess acceptable ranges of FIB levels, similar to those proposed for fungi.
