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Contaminants of Emerging Concern During De Facto Water Reuse
Citation:
Glassmeyer, S., E. Furlong, D. Kolpin, AND M. Mills. Contaminants of Emerging Concern During De Facto Water Reuse. 2017 Emerging Contaminants in the Aquatic Environment Conference, Champaign, IL, May 31 - June 01, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
Present keynote at emerging contaminants seminar
Description:
Our drinking water and wastewater cycles are integrally linked. Chemicals that are present in household wastewater may be sufficiently mobile and persistent to survive both on-site or municipal wastewater treatment and post-discharge environmental processes. Thus, such contaminants have the potential to reach surface and ground waters that can be sources of drinking water. The US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and US Geological Survey (USGS) are collaborating on a project examining the sources, fate, and potential effects of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) during de facto water reuse. The Lagrangian sampling design follows a surface water flowpath, collecting water samples in a stream from just above a wastewater treatment plant outfall and following the water parcel downstream to a drinking water treatment plant intake and subsequently through to finished drinking water. The study uses an integrated approach, including comprehensive chemical analysis (e.g. pharmaceuticals, perfluorinated chemicals, hormones, etc.), environmental diagnostics to identify non-target, unknown chemicals, in vitro bioassays (e.g. estrogenicity, androgenicity, genotoxicity, toxicity in metabolizing cells), rapid whole organisms screens (e.g. Microtox) to assess cumulative bioactivity, and in vivo tests to address specific exposure and response endpoints. A rigorous quality assurance/quality control protocol design was consistently applied from field to laboratory to ensure comparability of results between the variety of techniques employed. This consistent, integrated approach combines the strength of each technique and is ideal for CEC-related research in which traditional environmental and toxicity endpoints are not adequate for fully understanding potential effects from chemical exposures on human and environmental health. This presentation provides an overview of the study, discussing the project design and preliminary results from three separate sampling campaigns.
