Science Inventory

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Understanding the decay characteristics of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in wastewater and ambient waters is important for multiple applications including assessment of risk of exposure associated with handling wastewater samples, public health risk...

Poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are known as “forever chemicals” due to their ubiquitous environmental persistence and adverse human health effects. Short-chain PFAS are of increasing concern due to their high solubility and mobility in the water while poss...

The presentaion will describe the current state of the art for co-digestion of prepared food wastes with municipal sewage sludge.  The mixture enhances the production of methane.  That methane can then be sold as natural gas or used to create  heat or electrical en...

Water quality managers in the State of California and researchers abroad in the UK are applying effects-based methods and developing standard operating procedures and multi-level screening models to more efficiently screen water quality. Specifically the State of California has i...

Background: Enterococci are ubiquitous in wastewater, which can contaminate surface waters, including recreational water, via many pathways, providing a route of exposure for humans Antibiotic resistant Enterococcus spp. are among the leading causes of nosocomial infections world...

There is a critical research gap regarding the fate of PFAS in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). To address this gap, six WWTPs fulfilling a range of criteria were selected for long-term PFAS monitoring. Differing size, influent types, treatment technologies, and geographical ...

The San Juan Bay Estuary (SJBE) is an interconnected system of streams, bays, lagoons, and canals located in a highly urbanized area in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Due to the rapid rate of urbanization, some communities across the SJBE have limited access to or are impacted by failure...

•       An updated version (2) of EPA’s River Basin Export Reduction Optimization Support Tool (RBEROST) has been developed to provide nutrient management strategies for the Puget Sound Basin.  RBEROST is an R-based tool that sets up ...

Ball milling was used to fabricate a nanocomposite of 20% hickory-biochar (600°C) and 80% expanded vermiculite (20%-BC/VE). This novel adsorbent had much higher removal of As(V) from aqueous solution than ball-milled biochar and expanded vermiculite. Characterization of these...

Development of effective pollution mitigation strategies require an understanding of the pollution sources and factors influencing fecal pollution loading. Fecal contamination of Turkey Creek in Gulfport, Mississippi, one of the nation's most endangered creeks, was studied throug...

The aquatic environment has been recognized as a source of antibiotic resistance (AR) that factors into the One Health approach to combat AR. To provide much needed data on AR in the environment, a comprehensive survey of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB), antibiotic resistance...

The San Juan Bay Estuary (SJBE) is an interconnected system of streams, bays, lagoons, and canals located in a highly urbanized area in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Due to the rapid rate of urbanization, some communities across the SJBE have limited access to or are impacted by failure...

Microplastics (MPs) in aquatic environments accumulate a biofilm known as the plastisphere, a microbial community unique from that of the surrounding water and from biofilms that form on natural substrates. The plastisphere is known to accumulate pathogens and bacteria with antib...

In this work, we assess the techno-economic and social performance of preventing and controlling phosphorus releases from municipal wastewater effluents in local communities. This multicriteria assessment framework accounts for the effects of the economies of scale and the popula...

To assess the consequences of nutrient reduction strategies on water quality under climate change, we investigated the long-term dynamics of dissolved oxygen (DO) and pH in Narragansett Bay (NB), a warming urbanized estuary in Rhode Island, where nitrogen loads have declined due ...

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of man-made chemicals that have been in use since the 1940s in a wide array of consumer products. PFAS are persistent in the environment and bioaccumulate. Thermal treatment methods are currently applied to a variety of mater...

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...

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...

This study characterized Bacillus globigii (BG) as a Bacillus anthracis Sterne (BAS) surrogate for wastewater treatment-related studies of UV inactivation, adsorption onto powdered activated carbon (PAC), and bioaerosol emission. The inactivation of BG was faster than that of BAS...

Protein processing operations utilize large volumes of water for hair/hide/feather removal, carcass washing, chilling, trimming and cutting, cooking, cleaning and sanitation, etc. The generated wastewater is typically treated onsite and discharged to municipal wastewater treatmen...

PFAS are ubiquitous, persistent, and bioaccumulate in the environment. Thermal treatment methods are currently applied to a variety of PFAS-containing materials, including sewage sludge and granular activated carbon (GAC), but may not be sufficient to fully mineralize organic flu...

PFAS are ubiquitous, persistent, and bioaccumulate in the environment. Thermal treatment methods are currently applied to a variety of PFAS-containing materials, including sewage sludge and granular activated carbon (GAC), but may not be sufficient to fully mineralize organic flu...

Microplastics are ubiquitous in the environment and present potential adverse effects on human and environmental health. EPA's Office of Research and Development is interested in developing sampling and analytical methods for microplastic detection, investigating their effects on...

Consideration of PFAS precursors is necessary in order to close the gap between targeted PFAS analysis and a comprehensive quantification of total PFAS. However, current understanding is limited, and there are many misconceptions and questions: where are PFAS precursors found? Ar...

Phosphorus causes nutrient pollution in lentic water systems, which act as a reservoir of phosphorus since it is stored within the sediments of these waterbodies. The effects of phosphorus pollution include harmful algal bloom events, hypoxia of waterbodies, and impairment of dri...