A review of international wastewater reuse standards and guidelines

A key difference between the New Zealand guidelines and international guidelines for wastewater reuse is that the New Zealand guidelines focus on the application of wastewater to land as a means of disposal. [...] In the absence of New Zealand guidelines for wastewater reuse, there is the potential that on-site guidelines for the management of small domestic wastewater systems may be applied at a larger scale, such as the reuse of wastewater from larger wastewater treatment systems, or is used for larger activities, which increases risk due to the larger number of people potentially affected. [...] The AWRG (NRMMC et al 2006) guidelines use the example that mild diarrhoea lasting for seven days has a DALY of A review of wastewater standards and guidelines 13 0.002, but the death of a 1-year-old child from rotavirus infection has a DALY of 80, due to the reduction in life expectancy. [...] It should be noted that log reduction data used to assess the effectiveness of the preventive control may be based on the survival of FIB, equating the survival of FIB to that of the pathogen (i.e., the pathogen:FIB ratio is assumed to be the same after wastewater treatment and survival in the environment). [...] A review of wastewater standards and guidelines 28 3.5 DISCUSSION ON MICROBIOLOGICAL CRITERIA Guidelines developed by the WHO (2006) and FAO (1992) for the wastewater reuse in food production focus on LMIC, where there may be many pathways for disease and the benefits of food production are significant.