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METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH FOR MEASURING PRIORITY DBPS IN REVERSE OSMOSIS CONCENTRATED DRINKING WATER
Citation:
BODIN, N., H. S. WEINBERG, S. W. KRASNER, S. D. RICHARDSON, J. G. PRESSMAN, T. F. SPETH, R. J. MILTNER, AND J. E. SIMMONS. METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH FOR MEASURING PRIORITY DBPS IN REVERSE OSMOSIS CONCENTRATED DRINKING WATER. Presented at American Chemical Society National Meeting, Chicago, IL, March 25 - 29, 2007.
Impact/Purpose:
Develop analytical methods to quantify iodinated DBPs in chloraminated drinking waters and to collaborate with CDC which is developing methods to measure iodo-THMs in human blood/urine.
Description:
Many disinfection by-products (DBPs) are formed when drinking water is chlorinated, but only a few are routinely measured or regulated. Various studies have revealed a plethora of DBPs for which sensitive and quantitative analytical methods have always been a major limiting factor in developing an occurrence database. In an effort to extend our grasp of the potential health implications of current disinfection practices, approximately 500 of these DBPs that had been reported in the literature were prioritized according to predicted cancer effects and subsequently 50 of these were identified as high priority for a large-scale occurrence study across the U.S.A. Although many new sensitive analytical methods were developed for these new DBPs, some of them were found at levels close to or below their detection limits. Moreover, most of the previous toxicological testing for DBPs had been carried out on a single chemical-by-chemical basis, which could not account for the nature of a complex drinking water mixture nor explain the adverse health effects observed in some epidemiologic studies. Consequently, a new study was evolved that addressed these two weaknesses and provided for comprehensive chemical determination and toxicological evaluation of environmentally realistic complex mixtures of DBPs. In the present part of this large multi-disciplinary effort, drinking water was scaled-up by concentrating the total organic carbon (TOC) from a treated surface water and subjecting the concentrate to chlorination, using similar chlorine dose to TOC and bromide to TOC ratios as would be used or found in conventional treatment. Higher levels of all DBPs would be produced that could be detectable using currently available methods and a battery of toxicological assays could then focus on adverse health effects and correlate these to the levels and mixture of DBPs. This paper focuses on adaptation of methods used for quantitation of over 50 priority DBPs from drinking water to chlorinated surface water concentrates.