Systematic recovery of building plumbing-associated microbial communities after extended periods of altered water demand during the COVID-19 pandemic
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Abstract
Building closures related to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic resulted in increased water stagnation in commercial building plumbing systems that heightened concerns related to the microbiological safety of drinking water post re-opening. The exact impact of extended periods of reduced water demand on water quality is currently unknown due to the unprecedented nature of widespread building closures. We analyzed 420 tap water samples over a period of six months, starting the month of phased reopening (i.e., June 2020), from sites at three commercial buildings that were subjected to reduced capacity due to COVID-19 social distancing policies and four occupied residential households. Direct and derived flow cytometric measures along with water chemistry characterization were used to evaluate changes in plumbing-associated microbial communities with extended periods of altered water demand. Our results indicate that prolonged building closures impacted microbial communities in commercial buildings as indicated by increases in microbial cell counts, encompassing greater proportion cells with high nucleic acids. While flushing reduced cell counts and increased disinfection residuals, the microbial community composition in commercial buildings were still distinct from those at residential households. Nonetheless, increased water demand post-reopening enhanced systematic recovery over a period of months, as microbial community fingerprints in commercial buildings converged with those in residential households. Overall, our findings suggest that sustained and gradual increases in water demand may play a more important role in the recovery of building plumbing-associated microbial communities as compared to short-term flushing, after extended periods of altered water demand that result in reduced flow volumes.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2022.01.17.22269440: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Briefly, FCS files were imported into R using flowCore v2.2.035 and then four parameters in signal height format (i.e., FL1-H, FL3-H, SSC-H, and FSC-H) were extracted and rescaled using hyperbolic arcsine transformations. flowCoresuggested: (flowCore, RRID:SCR_002205)The raw FCS files have been deposited in FlowRepository and are publicly available under accession number FR-FCM-Z4SR. FlowRepositorysuggested: (FLOWRepository, RRID:SCR_013779)Non-multidimensional scaling (NMDS) was performed using metaMDS … SciScore for 10.1101/2022.01.17.22269440: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Briefly, FCS files were imported into R using flowCore v2.2.035 and then four parameters in signal height format (i.e., FL1-H, FL3-H, SSC-H, and FSC-H) were extracted and rescaled using hyperbolic arcsine transformations. flowCoresuggested: (flowCore, RRID:SCR_002205)The raw FCS files have been deposited in FlowRepository and are publicly available under accession number FR-FCM-Z4SR. FlowRepositorysuggested: (FLOWRepository, RRID:SCR_013779)Non-multidimensional scaling (NMDS) was performed using metaMDS provided in the vegan package38 to visualize differences in beta diversity based on Bray-Curtis dissimilarity distances and permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) was performed using adonis(vegan). vegansuggested: (vegan, RRID:SCR_011950)Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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