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Micropollutants in treated wastewater
Summary
This review examined research from 2015 to 2019 on pharmaceutical compounds, personal care products, and other micropollutants that survive wastewater treatment and enter waterways, finding that most are poorly regulated and that chemical analysis alone understates ecological risk. The authors call for better legal frameworks and more ecotoxicology testing to address the wide range of unmonitored contaminants leaving treatment plants.
Compounds such as pharmaceuticals, or personal care products are only partially removed in wastewater treatment processes. Large number of these compounds and their degradation products is out of any control. A small number of compounds are covered by legal regulations. Among the compounds non-regulated by law, the target compounds, as well as non-target compounds can be distinguished. In the scientific literature, number of reports on various target compounds' determination is increasingly growing. This paper provides an up-to-date review on micropollutants present in treated wastewater and their concentrations found in literature in the years 2015-2019. Because the obtained results of chemical analyses do not adequately reflect the risks to ecosystems and consequently humans, the results of chemical analyses have been supplemented by a review of ecotoxicological studies. In addition, legal issues linked to contamination of treated wastewater and research related to identification of non-target compounds in treated effluents have been discussed.
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