Water Microorganisms Associated with Human Health, 2nd Edition

Water and human health are closely intertwined. While water is essential to life, it also represents a primary exposure pathway to potentially pathogenic microorganisms through both consumption and direct contact, including during recreational activities. This Special Issue brings together contributions that reflect a field in transition from microorganism detection toward decision-ready interpretation. Across both engineered and natural waters, the papers examine how monitoring choices, ecological context, and governance needs shape the conclusions that can be drawn from microbial data and how they can inform prevention. The volume spans wastewater surveillance and its interpretive dependencies, indicator selection frameworks relevant to reclaimed water reuse, and riverine microbiome characterization coupled to physicochemical conditions and functional inference. It also addresses antimicrobial resistance and virulence determinants in reuse-relevant waters, eukaryotic pathogens, and opportunists across drinking, coastal, and recreational settings, as well as mechanistic insights into host-microbe interactions. Finally, it extends into anticipatory public health, modeling climate-linked changes in conditions that favor naturally occurring pathogens in bathing and surface waters. Collectively, the Special Issue supports an integrated view of water quality management in which comparability, uncertainty, exposure relevance, and operational feasibility are treated as central design requirements for surveillance and risk assessment.