Large and growing segments of the United States population consume seafood or engage in marine recreation. These activities provide significant benefits but also bring risk of exposure to marine-borne illness. To manage these risks, it is important to understand the incidence and cost of marine-borne disease. We review the literature and surveillance/monitoring data to determine the annual incidence of disease and health consequences due to marine-borne pathogens from seafood consumption and beach recreation in the USA. Using this data, we employ a cost-of-illness model to estimate economic impacts. Our results suggest that health consequences due to marine-borne pathogens in the USA have annual costs on the order of US$900 million. This includes US$350 million due to pathogens and marine toxins specifically identified as causing food-borne disease, an estimated US$300 million due to seafood-borne disease with unknown etiology, US$30 million from direct exposure to the Vibrio species, and US$300 million due to gastrointestinal illness from beach recreation. Although there is considerable uncertainty about the degree of underreporting of certain pathogen-specific acute marine-related illnesses, the conservative assumptions we have used in constructing our estimate suggest that it should be considered a lower bound on true costs.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
Research Article|
April 26 2011
An estimate of the cost of acute health effects from food- and water-borne marine pathogens and toxins in the USA
Erin P. Ralston;
1Marine Policy Center, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA
E-mail: [email protected]
Search for other works by this author on:
Hauke Kite-Powell;
Hauke Kite-Powell
1Marine Policy Center, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA
Search for other works by this author on:
Andrew Beet
Andrew Beet
1Marine Policy Center, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA
Search for other works by this author on:
J Water Health (2011) 9 (4): 680–694.
Article history
Received:
October 04 2010
Accepted:
February 11 2011
Citation
Erin P. Ralston, Hauke Kite-Powell, Andrew Beet; An estimate of the cost of acute health effects from food- and water-borne marine pathogens and toxins in the USA. J Water Health 1 December 2011; 9 (4): 680–694. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/wh.2011.157
Download citation file: