Fungal Contaminants in Water and Sand: A New Frontier for Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment

Abstract Water sports and recreation can lead to exposure to microbial pathogens, including opportunists. At the beach, the Guidelines for Safe Recreational Water Environments, by the World Health Organization, are currently the leading public health and safety regulatory recommendations. As policy-makers begin to revisit the guidelines for safe recreational water environments and subsequent legislation, consideration of evidence gathered by a global community of varied professional fields is recommended. Quantitative microbial risk assessment is a recent approach that estimates the risk of exposure to pathogens in recreational water from dose-response relationships and observed pathogen concentrations. This can be powerful in informing public health policy in recreational areas. However, some microorganisms, namely fungi, do not yet have established median infectious doses, despite their known ability to impact human health at beaches. Can we calculate the risk of fungal exposure? Not yet, but we should work toward this goal.