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Tatsuya Asami, Department of Urban Engineering, wins JSWE-KURITA Best Presentation Award

 

Tatsuya Asami, Department of Urban Engineering, wins JSWE-KURITA Best Presentation Award.
This award is given to graduate students in master’s programs who give an excellent research presentation in Annual Conference of Japan Society on Water Environment.

 

 

<About awarded research>
Among the risks through consumption of tap water is the risk of infectious diseases such as diarrhea caused by pathogenic microorganisms like bacteria, protozoa and viruses. However, almost no water quality standard has any regulation on viruses, so some risk management systems need to be established. And, it is considered to be important to set critical risk control points in the water supply process from the water source to the tap based on the concept of HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points).

Therefore, in this research, the removal efficiency of the viruses at drinking water treatment processes as the risk control points was measured in an actual plant of Bangkok city for three months. It is the case that the most of previous studies could not measure the removal efficiency of viruses in actual plant scale due to the technical difficulty. But, this research succeeded it by applying the large volume concentration method and by targeting PMMoV (Pepper Mild Mottle Virus) which is contained in environmental samples in high concentration.

It is expected that a risk management system against viruses will be constructed by applying the same methodology of this research.

 

 

<Comments>

Without advice given by Assoc. Prof. Katayama, Prof. Visvanathan and Prof. Furumai, and cooperation of the staff members of the water treatment plant, I could not have got the award. And, without the opportunity to stay and study in Thailand provided by UTokyo UEHAS program (Interdisciplinary Consortium on Urban Environment and Health in Asia), I could not have done such long-term investigation. Let me take this occasion to express my gratitude to everyone above. I would like to carry on my research in the next academic year encouraged by this award.