Toxic Cyanobacteria in Water: A Guide to Their Public Health Consequences, Monitoring and Management

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Summary: Toxic Cyanobacteria in Water-from beginners to advanced
Review: I would recomend this book to anyone looking for a comprehensive and easy to read text about toxic cyanobacteria. Chorus and Bartram have managed to fit together a great deal of very informative notes by many different authors in a format that progresses naturally from basic concepts of cyanobacteria and their helpful/harmful effects to what can be done to monitor, and manage them. Wheter you are just becoming interested in cyanobacteria or lake health, or have been studying it for many years, this book should be part of your collection. The section on analytical methods for cyanobacteria provide excellent basic methodology in this area, but anyone wishing to undertake detailed analysis not from scratch would also be well off searching published methods in scientific journals as they will not find all the nitty gritty details they will need.

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Summary: A comprehensive and useful book on toxic cyanobacteria
Review: This publication is useful to professionals dealing with problems related to Harmful Algal Blooms, including public health, water supply and management staff, since it discusses monitoring programmes and criteria for different water uses (drinking water, recreational uses, organisms consumption, haemodialysis), as well as a thorough discussion on remedial measures. It is essential to environment control officers, and because it was published on behalf of the World Health Organization (WHO) it can be used as an official advice for countries lacking specific legislation on the subject. It is useful as well for undergraduate and graduate students as its introduction and initial chapters present a summary on cyanobacteria and its ecology (diversity, distribution, related environmental factors) and physiology. It then presents the different toxins produced by these organisms and their consequences to human health as well as a discussion on safe levels and safe practices for each water use. This book discusses the importance of this problem worldwide, through several case studies and was produced by a group of well known researchers from various continents. Some issues and events are discussed in several self-explained boxes within the publication, which are intelligible and useful. The final chapters discuss risk management, monitoring programmes, field work, sampling and analytical methodology, including phytoplankton, clorophyll a and nutrients analysis, essential for those concerned with hazard identification and evaluation. This book is also interesting to everyone concerned with water quality and environmental issues, for cyanobacteria blooms are a widespread problem which results of excessive nutriet loads on water bodies, mostly because of inadequate land use and inefficient water quality policies. Ultimately its remediation depends on public awareness.