A thought, a question, an idea for you to steal....

[go_team]

There needs to be a better way to dispose of medicines (prescription and over-the-counter) than flushing them down the toilet or throwing them in the trash. I think this every time I find some expired cough syrup in the medicine cabinet, or when I hear about another one of those studies where somebody found trace amounts of antidepressants and birth control hormones in some municipal water supply, which is freaky and scary and sad. I know some of it is the drugs that people don't process and pass out in their sweat and urine and whatever, but drugs that get thrown out can't be helping, either. Oh, and in case you'd forgotten, even for a second: antibiotic resistance. That's some bad stuff, mmkay? So yeah. Pharmaceutical pollution. It freaks me out, and I don't even know where to begin dealing with the problem except to ask all my awesome and brilliant friends and readers about it. Go Team!

Comments

Teh buzzword is...

[akjdg.livejournal.com]

The buzzword in the water/wastewater engineering world for this problem is "emerging contaminants" (EC). Because the problem is emerging from the realm of the unknown and becoming a real stickler (or something. I dunno).

One of the concerns is that existing wastewater treatment technologies fail to remove these constituents from wastewater streams, as those plants focus instead on removing BOD, COD, TSS, and pathogens from the wastewater stream. Thus environmental introduction, and fishies that change sex.

The other concern (and I'm less clear on this one) is that water treatment plants may not adequately remove these constituents during treatment. Off the cuff, the only treatment steps likely to remove a good chunk of these chemicals is GAC filtration and chlorination to eat up the organics. How well do they work, and for which of the ECs? Dunno. What kinda of disinfection byproducts (DBPs) are created when you douse exotic pharmeceuticals in free chlorine, and what are their public health implications?

Also, the concerns about DBPs from primary disinfection of drinking water with chlorine is driving a trend away from chlorination towards ozonation or UV radiation, with addition of a chlorine residual at the end of the treatment train. This is better in terms of reducing DBPs, but I don't know how well these technologies perform at EC removal as compared to traditional primary chlorination.

Something to think about...