Monday, April 29, 2013
Tourism is the world’s largest industry and generator of jobs, generating more than $944 billion to international economies in 2008 alone. Tourism represents one of the most important sources of revenue and foreign investments in Mexico. In the last 10 years, the Riviera Maya, a 120 km strip along the east coast of the Yucatan, has been the fastest-growing region in Latin America with 20-25% annual population growth and visited by more than 1.7 million tourists per year. Such massive population growth has resulted in a potential for serious depletion and/or degradation of groundwater supplies. The Yucatan is considered a groundwater dependent ecosystem (GDE), completely reliant on aquifers for supplies of freshwater. It is widely recognized that the groundwaters of the Yucatan Peninsula are contaminated. The current extent of groundwater pollution in the Yucatan Peninsula is unknown, but the extreme population growth has undoubtedly contributed to current levels of contamination, and furthermore, has increased the potential for future large-scale pollution to occur. Underlying the Yucatán Peninsula is a highly permeable fractured karst limestone aquifer characterized by rapid transport of microbial and chemical contaminants both from the surface to below ground aquifers. The research project tested groundwater, swimming sinkholes (cenotes), and marine water for biological and chemical sources of contamination, then assessed potential human health risks of recreational water illnesses from exposures to cenotes and marine water based on quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA).
