Research

New appointment for Dr Huw Taylor

Published 24 March 2010

Dr Huw Taylor of the School of Environment and Technology has been appointed to the executive board of a new global initiative to increase the understanding of the impact of sewage on water quality and health throughout the world.

Worldwide, there are 884 million people without access to improved water sources and 2.5 billion people without access to improved sanitation. Sewage remains the primary source of contaminants in water, including nutrients and emerging pollutants such as pharmaceuticals and waterborne disease-causing bacteria, viruses and parasites.

The International Collaboratory for Sewage has 41 contributing institutions in 28 countries on six continents. The group is documenting improved sanitation, sewage systems and wastewater treatment to produce a global map of pollution in rivers.

Dr Taylor's appointment follows his contribution to the global development of Microbial Source Tracking (MST) and his current leadership of AquaManche – a European Regional Development Fund supported collaboration with the UK Environment Agency, l'Université de Caen Basse-Normandie, and Ifremer (the French Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea).

AquaManche is the first European collaboration to apply MST to river catchment pollution management, and aims to provide new ways to predict and manage aquatic pollution problems.

Huw said: "This is a great honour, but more importantly it reflects the hard work and commitment of several postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers in our Environment and Public Health Research Unit (EPHRU) over the past ten years. It is through their efforts that the University of Brighton is increasingly seen as a world leader in managing agents of waterborne disease. Through my contribution to IC Sewage over the next few years I hope to push to include more scientists from less economically developed countries in the development of appropriate tools for health protection where it is needed most."

For further information on these initiatives, email Huw on h.d.taylor@brighton.ac.uk.