Image
back to all news
Extreme rain heightens E. coli risks for communities of color in Texas
Image
Caption
A cluster of E. coli bacterial cells appear as orange rod-shaped structures in a colorized micrograph. Image credit: National Institutes of Health (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Contact: Matt Davenport
New research led by Xiaofeng Liu, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), reveals that communities of color in Texas face higher risks of E. coli exposure in nearby waters after storms cause extreme levels of precipitation.
Liu, who is also a Schmidt AI in Science fellow at the Michigan Institute for Data and AI in Society, says the research team used computational models to spot when and where extreme rain had the greatest impacts on E. coli levels, while also finding associations between these impacts and socioeconomic factors.
The research team focused on Texas because E. coli is a known problem in the state, but by connecting surface water quality with social factors, they say the model is applicable to other regions.