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EPA’s Drinking Water Treatability Database: A Tool for All Drinking Water Professionals
Citation:
Perry, S., T. Speth, Jeff Adams, AND M. Dodd. EPA’s Drinking Water Treatability Database: A Tool for All Drinking Water Professionals. In Proceedings, AWWA's Water Quality and Technology Conference, Long Beach, CA, November 03 - 06, 2013. American Water Works Association, Denver, CO, ,, (2013).
Impact/Purpose:
This presentation will cover EPA's Treatability Database (www.epa.gov/tdb), specifically with regard to integrating this effort with the University of Washington's engineering curriculum.
Description:
The Drinking Water Treatability Database (TDB) is being developed by the USEPA Office of Research and Development to allow drinking water professionals and others to access referenced information gathered from thousands of literature sources and assembled on one site. Currently, the TDB includes 61 regulated and unregulated microbial, chemical, and radiological contaminants and more than 2,100 references. Over time, the TDB is expected to expand to include more than 200 contaminants, cross referenced to more than 25 treatment processes used by water systems. The references include bench-, pilot-, and full-scale studies of surface waters, ground waters and laboratory waters. Sources of these references include peer-reviewed journals, conferences and symposia, research reports, theses, and dissertations. By adding new contaminants and by upgrading references on existing contaminants, the TDB will always be a current source of information on drinking water contaminant control. The USEPA has recently begun a process to bring a more diverse group of drinking water professionals together to help expand the breadth and depth of the TDB. The professional groups include academics, regulators, consulting engineers, and AWWA committees. Emphasis will be placed on incorporating data collection and interpretation into academic courses, particularly environmental chemistry and advanced water treatment classes. Students will benefit from learning what parameters are essential for making decisions regarding the fate and transport of these contaminants in the environment and through treatment, and they will have the ability to see their course work referenced in a USEPA website that is accessed by a worldwide audience. Additional help will be garnered through AWWA committees to assure the quality of the data and any interpretations therein. The initial focus of this expanded effort includes carcinogenic VOCs currently under regulatory consideration by the USEPA as well as some of the more widely detected SOCs. The proposed presentation will focus on the TDB structure, the tools offered by the TDB, as well as providing drinking water professionals an on-ramp into participating in further TDB development.
URLs/Downloads:
http://www.awwa.org/portals/0/files/education/conferences/wqtc/conference-program/resources/57.htm
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