Prof. Amy Greer, from the Department of Population Medicine at the Ontario Veterinary College, appeared on the Global News’ podcast The Super Awesome Science Show, to discuss water safety.

Greer, a Canada Research Chair in Population Disease Modelling, talked about the One Health approach to clean water management, in which human, animal and environmental activity are all factored in when looking at ways to address the problems of maintaining clean water.

She said while many assume that farm run-off is responsible for most incidents of water contamination, it can also be cause by animal pathogens, aging sewer systems that allow wastewater overflows into waterways, and even climate change-caused flooding.

Greer studies the spread and control of infectious diseases using empirical data with mathematical models to examine the mechanisms that lead to the epidemic spread of pathogens.