University Of Sharjah Collage of Higher Education and Scientific Research M.Sc.

in Civil Engineering Program

Assignment 3 to

Environmental Impact Assessment Analysis

(0401564)

Done By Hussain Osama Qasem U00028420 Submitted to Prof. Abdullah Shanableh

Introduction Assessment of food health is a major concern for people and local authorities. Thus,

many approaches have been done to assess the food safety to secure food resources available for

a nation. Take as an example of these models the Beta-Poison model and the exponential model.

The assignment that is to do is to assess the safety and healthiness of food (lettuce) irrigated by

reclaimed wastewater (look for problem statement in the next page). The equation that governs

the dose of the poisonous material on the crop is

Where: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. () is the dose (Din) is the intake rate (Cv) is the rotavirus concentration (Vw) is the volume of water on the crop (k) is the virus decay constant

It is clear that nearly all of the equation parameters not a constant value but a distribution, here

our luck was that all parameters follow the normal distribution.

Introduction to Rotavirus (From Wikipedia)

Rotavirus is the most common cause of severe diarrhea among infants and young children. It is a genus of double-stranded RNA virus in the family Reoviridae. By the age of five, nearly every child in the world has been infected with rotavirus at least once. However, with each infection, immunity develops, and subsequent infections are less severe; adults are rarely affected. There are five species of this virus, referred to as A, B, C, D, and E. Rotavirus A, the most common, causes more than 90% of infections in humans. The virus is transmitted by the faecal-oral route. It infects and damages the cells that line the small intestine and causes gastroenteritis (which is often called "stomach flu" despite having no relation to influenza). Although rotavirus was discovered in 1973 and accounts for up to 50% of hospitalizations for severe diarrhea in infants and children, its importance is still not widely known within the public health community, particularly in developing countries. In addition to its impact on human health, rotavirus also infects animals, and is a pathogen of livestock. Rotavirus is usually an easily managed disease of childhood, but worldwide more than 450,000 children under five years of age still die from rotavirus infection each year, 85 percent of who live in developing countries, and almost two million more become severely ill. In the United States, before initiation of the rotavirus vaccination program, rotavirus caused about 2.7 million cases of severe gastroenteritis in children, almost 60,000 hospitalizations, and around 37 deaths each year. Public health campaigns to combat rotavirus focus on providing oral rehydration therapy for infected children and vaccination to prevent the disease. The incidence and severity of rotavirus infections has declined significantly in countries that have added rotavirus vaccine to their routine childhood immunization policies.

Methodology Since we have normal distributions to deal with, a special method is needed then. Monte Carlo

simulation is used to deal with this kind of data with the aid of computer programming

(Microsoft Excel)

First we have to establish all parameters variable value cells in the program. Then, we are to

establish relationships of dose equation and Beta-Poison model equations. After that we use the

Monte Carlo simulation using the program to give the mean value of both, the risk of single dose

and the risk of (n) doses that gives the mean value (target) and its standard deviation since we

deal with normal distribution models.

Risk to single dose is given by the equation

[ Where 50 = 6.17 & = 0.253 for rotavirus

)(

)]

Risk to (n) doses is given by this equation

[ Where (n) is the number of meals per year

Conclusion on findings

The Risk of the infection due to rotavirus of consuming lettuce after 1 day of harvest is as high

catastrophically as 0.6048 and this is because of a single dose only. But with the given

distribution of meals consumption a year the risk jumps to 0.8417.

The Risk of the infection due to rotavirus of consuming lettuce after 7 days of harvest is is now

0.046 and this is because of a single dose only. But with the given distribution of meals

consumption a year the risk jumps to 0.0844.

The Risk of the infection due to rotavirus of consuming lettuce after 14 days of harvest is now

0.0009 and this is because of a single dose only. But with the given distribution of meals

consumption a year the risk jumps to 0.0018.

It is obvious that keeping the food for a period not less than 14 days will decrease the risk

significantly. Not only this. But also, washing corps before consuming is a very great mitigation

measure.

This, if there is no clean water to irrigate the crops with.