“Human fecal contamination” at origin of bottled water health scare

 

The bout of gastroenteritis that left more than 4,000 people sick after they drank bottled water was caused by “human fecal contamination,” according to Catalan health authorities.

The norovirus that health officials found in patient samples also showed up in water that had been drawn from Arinsa Spring, in the nearby principality of Andorra.

But the Catalan Public Health Agency (ASPCAT) said it was unlikely that the spring water itself was contaminated, and pointed at the bottling plant Aïgues de Andorra as the likely source of the problem.

Albert Bosch, the researcher who analyzed the samples, said that “it is hard to imagine that there could be fecal waters near the spring.”

The Catalan health chief, Joan Guix, said that the only repository for this type of norovirus is the human body, and that the origin of the health scare must have been caused by “human fecal contamination.”

Investigators are now trying to determine how the transmission took place, and awaiting a report from Andorran authorities, who have halted all production lines at the bottling plant until the matter is resolved.

This is the first time in recorded history that a virus has been found inside bottled water, said Catalan health authorities.

All it takes is a few dozen units of the norovirus to cause an infection; up to 10,000 particles per liter of two kinds of noroviruses were detected in the suspect water. They were the same kind found in the patient samples.

“We found positive samples in feces and in water, which proves that there is a cause-effect relation,” said Guix.