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Drinking water nitrate contamination is a significant economic and public health concern in The Great Plains, with few tested best practices for improving source water quality. This project seeks to establish a monitoring framework for quantifying the benefits of soil health prac...

Legionella pneumophila (Lp) is an opportunistic pathogen that causes respiratory infections primarily through inhalation of contaminated aerosols. Lp can colonize premise plumbing systems due to favorable growth conditions found within those environments (e.g. lower disinfectant ...

Although the offshore water of Lake Michigan has been below the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA) total phosphorus (TP) spring target concentration of 7 µg L−1 for several decades, higher TP concentrations occur in the nearshore, contributing to the res...

A coconut shell based (AC1230CX) and a bituminous coal based (F400) granular activated carbon (GAC) were ground with mortar and pestle (MP), a blender, and a bench-scale ball milling unit (BMU). For particle size reduction, the blender was the most time efficient method. Four siz...

Drinking water utilities are vulnerable to both human-caused and natural disasters that can impact the system infrastructure and the delivery of potable water to consumers. Resilience analysis can help utilities identify high-risk areas in their system and understand how to bette...

Premise Plumbing Modeling - Demonstrating effectiveness of new modeling for premise plumbing systems

The Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) framework has been adopted as means to assemble, organize, and integrate all available biological information to support sound regulatory decision making. Environmental chemicals can interfere with the thyroid system at numerous sites, and these ...

Nitrogen management in Long Island Sound (LIS) has reduced N loading and the extent of hypoxia over the last 2 decades. To support communication around successful remediation of hypoxia and the remaining challenges of N management, we are analyzing 30 years of water quality data ...

Onsite wastewater treatment systems are a major source of excess nutrients and co-pollutants in groundwater. The high density of septic systems in New England’s coastal watersheds has degraded the quality of drinking and recreational freshwater resources and led to collapse...

The Regional Monitoring Networks (RMNs) are a collaborative, volunteer effort to collect comparable long-term monitoring data at targeted sites nationwide to detect changes over time. Six Northeast states have participated in the stream RMN since it was first piloted in the North...

Reduction of total phosphorus (TP) loads has long been a management focus of Chesapeake Bay restoration, but riverine monitoring stations have shown mixed temporal trends. To better understand the regional patterns and drivers of TP trends across the Bay watershed, we compiled an...

EPA-ORD-CPHEA's Michael Pennino and Jana Compton were invited to present on groundwater nitrate at the EPA Region 5 State Water Directors Meeting on May 15, 2024.  This meeting brings together EPA Region 5 state clean water and drinking water directors to discuss topics of c...

Combustion of mixed materials during open air burning of refuse and housefires produces emissions that worsen air and water quality and cause adverse health effects. The purpose of this study was to assess the irritant potential of extractable organic material of smoke condensate...

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) were a topic of great interest at the 2018 ASLO Summer Meeting in Victoria, B.C., Canada (Fig. 1). This was no surprise, since HABs may become – and already are in some areas – the greatest water quality threat to public health and aquatic ...

Kinetic models for the redox chemistry of disinfectant decay and toxic disinfection byproduct formation are essential to ensure water quality and protect public health; however, analytical limits have hindered model development. Proton transfer time of flight mass spectrometry (P...

Distribution system nitrification is an important issue for water utilities that use chloramines as a secondary disinfectant. This presentation reviews the causes of nitrification and how to monitor, prevent, and react to nitrification events. Furthermore, an update on research n...

Overview presentation on ORD’s Technical Assistance Program for Emerging Contaminants

To present EPA PFAS research to the primacy agency and small drinking water utilities in Idaho. 

Microplastic contamination raises concerns in drinking water quality due to difficulties in removing them during treatment and potential for contaminant leaching. EPA’s Office of Research and Development is interested in developing sampling and analytical methods for microp...

EPA is developing new, rapid methods for monitoring water quality at beaches to determine adequacy of water quality for swimming. The methods being developed rely upon quantitive polymerase chain reaction technology. They will permit real time decisions regarding beach closures...

This is a presentation to the Water Treatment Interagency Working Group and is a summary of EPA/ORDs water sensor research effort, focusing on drinking water applications. 

Water quality standards are important for protecting and restoring the condition of lakes, rivers, estuaries, and other water bodies in the United States. Given that nutrient pollution continues to be a widespread problem in aquatic systems, the development of numeric nutrient cr...

Excess nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) in lakes can lead to eutrophication, hypoxia, and algal blooms that may harm aquatic life and people.  Some U.S. states have established numeric water quality criteria for nutrients to protect surface waters.  However...

New chemical formulations are being tested to replace PFAS-containing fire-fighting foams in several applications, including systems designed to protect aviation fuels, weapons, chemical tankers, and large petroleum tanks. The current efforts are focused on identifying and synthe...

Historic droughts in western states driven by anthropogenic warming have resulted in an unprecedented increase in wildfire frequency and area burned. In the last few decades, fire acres burned in the United States have more than doubled, with concomitant increased risk to human h...