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Review of emerging contaminants in green stormwater infrastructure: Antibiotic resistance genes, microplastics, tire wear particles, PFAS, and temperature
Summary
This review examines how green stormwater systems like rain gardens and permeable pavement handle emerging contaminants including microplastics, tire wear particles, and PFAS chemicals. While these systems were not originally designed to capture such pollutants, the review finds that with proper design modifications they could serve as a first line of defense. This matters for human health because stormwater runoff carries microplastics and other contaminants into the waterways that supply drinking water.
Green stormwater infrastructure is a growing management approach to capturing, infiltrating, and treating runoff at the source. However, there are several emerging contaminants for which green stormwater infrastructure has not been explicitly designed to mitigate and for which removal mechanisms are not yet well defined. This is an issue, as there is a growing understanding of the impact of emerging contaminants on human and environmental health. This paper presents a review of five emerging contaminants - antibiotic resistance genes, microplastics, tire wear particles, PFAS, and temperature - and seeks to improve our understanding of how green stormwater infrastructure is impacted by and can be designed to mitigate these emerging contaminants. To do so, we present a review of the source and transport of these contaminants to green stormwater infrastructure, specific treatment mechanisms within green infrastructure, and design considerations of green stormwater infrastructure that could lead to their removal. In addition, common removal mechanisms across these contaminants and limitations of green infrastructure for contaminant mitigation are discussed. Finally, we present future research directions that can help to advance the use of green infrastructure as a first line of defense for downstream water bodies against emerging contaminants of concern.