High-Risk Pollutants in Wastewater

Hongqiang Ren, Xuxiang Zhang

• Publisher: Elsevier
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780128164488
• eBook ISBN:
  9780128175149
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

High-Risk Pollutants in Wastewater presents the basic knowledge regarding the diversity, concentrations, and health and environmental impacts of HRPs in municipal wastewater. The book summarizes information on the types (e.g. heavy metals, toxic organics and pathogens) and toxicities of HRPs in wastewater. In addition, it describes ecological and health hazards arising from the living things' direct/indirect contacts with the HRPs during their full lifecycles (generation, disposal, discharge and reuse) in wastewater or water environments. Sections cover the concepts of appropriate technology for HRP hazard/risk assessment and wastewater treatment/reuse and the issues of strategy and policy for increasing risk control coverage. Finally, the book focuses on the resolution of water quality monitoring, wastewater treatment and disposal problems in both developed and developing countries. - Presents information on HRPs and their risk assessment and control technologies - Provides basic knowledge regarding the diversity, concentrations, and health and environmental impacts of HRPs in municipal wastewater - Summarizes information on the types (e.g. heavy metals, toxic organics and pathogens) and toxicities of HRPs in wastewater

Chapter 1

Introduction

Xuxiang Zhang, PhD, and Hongqiang Ren, PhD      State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

1. 1.1 Environmental high-risk pollutants 
2. 1.2 Control of HRPs in wastewater 
3. 1.3 Objective and contents of this book 

1.1. Environmental high-risk pollutants

In recent years, in addition to large quantities of pollutants such as COD and ammonia nitrogen, new problems regarding the toxic substances in the environment have been highlighted. In China, nearly 50,000 kinds of chemicals are produced and used for different purposes, and this number is still increasing, as many new drugs, antibiotics, and pesticides are being continuously synthesized for use. Besides the chemicals, some biological substances (e.g., bacterial pathogen, viruses, and antibiotic resistance genes) coming from living organisms can also lead to adverse effects on both human and the environment. Notably, wastewater is an important environmental reservoir for both the chemical and biological substances, which can introduce them into receiving water body along with wastewater discharge. Many of the chemicals are structurally complex and are stable and difficult to degrade. Owing to the cumulative and persistent characteristics, the substances cannot be completely removed in the existing conventional wastewater treatment systems; thus, considerable amount of the substances or their transformed products enter water and soil environments through the discharge from industrial or urban point sources, as well as urban or agricultural nonpoint sources. The substances entering the environment are called “pollutants,” and a variety of them have been frequently detected in natural waters such as rivers, lakes, oceans, and groundwater in recent years. It has been estimated that over 4000 kinds of trace organic pollutants are present in water environment in China, which have become an important factor endangering human and environmental health.

Although most of the pollutants have low concentrations or abundance in the environment, many of them can accumulate in organisms and spread and enrich through the food chain, leading to chronic poisoning of animals or human. The other part of pollutants is not stable, but they are continuously discharged into natural water due to continuous production and extensive use for human living and animal husbandry. After long-term even full-lifecycle exposure, the phenomenon of “pseudopersistence” is formed in animal or human bodies to induce toxicities. Therefore, the chronic toxicity, microbial resistance, and synergistic toxicity caused by the substances have received growing concerns.

High-risk pollutants (HRPs) are defined as the highly diverse chemical and biological matters with high toxicity and complicated toxicological mechanisms that can pose serious risks to ecosystems and human health even at low concentrations. HRP pollution is regarded by the United Nations Environment Program as an urgent issue that needs to be dealt with through global cooperation, and since the 1990s many developed countries have introduced regulations to control HRPs. In 2014, China also issued the “High-Risk Pollutants Reduction Action Plan”. European legislation follows the precautionary principle and has introduced stringent threshold limits (100   ng/L) for many chemical HRPs in water environments. Industrial and municipal wastewater contains a variety of HRPs including highly diverse chemical and biological substances with high toxicities, posing serious risks to ecosystems and human health even at low concentrations.

1.2. Control of HRPs in wastewater

Water shortage is one of today's grand challenges as many of the rivers or lakes in the world become polluted, and wastewater reuse or deep cleaning is considered effective in solving the problem. Presence of a variety of HRPs in industrial and municipal wastewater constrains the advanced treatment and reuse of the wastewater. Evaluation and control of HRPs in wastewater is an important issue for water pollution control, and only measuring quantitative integrated indices, such as COD_Cr and BOD₅, is not sufficient for assessing and controlling the risk induced by wastewater discharge, so biotoxicity indices and standards have been recommended as alternatives in many countries.

Recently, advanced treatment and reuse of wastewater have been increasingly implemented in many countries to solve the problems of serious water shortage and pollution. The advanced physicochemical technologies include membrane filtration, activated carbon absorption, and advanced oxidation, but they are neither environmentally nor economically sustainable, which seriously constrains their practical application. As a sustainable and cost-efficient alternative, biodegradation of HRPs either by endogenous or bioaugmented microbiota is considered as promising technologies. However, various bottlenecks hamper the implementation of biodegradation as a robust HRP removal technology that combines removal efficacy, energy efficiency, and risk reduction, and the key problem to be solved is how to eliminate the microbial constraints that limit biodegradation of HRPs present as mixtures in wastewater. Therefore, application of appropriate hazard/risk assessment and treatment technologies, which are effective, low cost, and simple to operate, is a key component in any strategy aimed at reducing ecological and health risks arising from wastewater discharge and reuse.

1.3. Objective and contents of this book

Currently, many books on the market have been focused on the treatment technology and engineering of wastewater to meet the discharge or reuse standards required by the governments of different countries, but provide little information regarding HRPs and their risk assessment and control technologies. Therefore, the major objectives of this book entitled “High-Risk Pollutants in Wastewater” are as follows:

• (1) This book presents the basic knowledge regarding the diversity, concentrations, and health and environmental impacts of HRPs in wastewater. The book summarizes the information of the types (e.g., heavy metals, toxic organics, and pathogens) and toxicities of HRPs in wastewater, and also describes ecological and health hazards or risks arising from the living things' direct/indirect contacts with the HRPs during their full lifecycles (generation, disposal, discharge, and reuse) in wastewater or water environments.
• (2) This book presents the concepts of appropriate technology for HRP hazard/risk assessment and wastewater treatment/reuse and the issues of strategy and policy for increasing the risk control coverage. The book focuses on the resolution of water quality monitoring and wastewater treatment and disposal problems in both developed and developing countries, and the concepts presented are wished to be valid and applicable in risk warning and control for wastewater discharge into the environment and reuse for any purposes.

This book mainly includes 11 chapters: (1) Introduction; (2) Chemical HRPs in wastewater; (3) Biological HRPs in wastewater; (4) Technologies for detection of HRPs in wastewater; (5) Human health hazards of wastewater; (6) Ecological safety hazards of wastewater; (7) Assessment technologies for hazards/risks of wastewater; (8) Physicochemical technologies for HRPs and risk control; (9) Biological technologies for HRPs and risk control; (10) Wastewater disinfection technologies; and (11) Risk management policy for HRPs in wastewater.

This book delivers the idea of recognition, assessment, and control of HRPs, including highly diverse chemical and biological matters with high toxicity at low concentrations. The book was technologically written, and does not involve traditional pollutants that also affect environmental and ecological health, such as nitrogen and phosphorus in wastewater. This book is expected to be used as a textbook or reference book for the graduate students majoring in environmental science, environmental engineering, and civil engineering, and will also provide a useful reference for wastewater treatment plant personnel, industrial wastewater treatment professionals, government agency regulators, environmental consultants, and environmental attorneys.

Chapter 2

Chemical HRPs in wastewater

Gang Wu, Jinfeng Wang, and Jinju Geng, PhD State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

Abstract

Chemical high-risk pollutants (HRPs) in wastewater have received growing concerns in recent years for their persistent input and potential threat to ecological environment and human health. Heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants (POPs), pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs), endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), and disinfection by-products (DBPs) are the most frequently detectable chemical HRPs in wastewater. Understanding the environmental behavior and transformation characteristic of chemical HRPs is important to their removal and risk reduction in environment. In this chapter, according to the different types of chemical HRPs in municipal wastewater and industrial wastewater, the source of different chemical HRPs are introduced at first. Then, the occurrence and contamination levels of chemical HRPs are summarized item by item. Furthermore, the migration and transformation processes of chemica...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Contributors
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Chapter 2. Chemical HRPs in wastewater
• Chapter 3. Biological HRPs in wastewater
• Chapter 4. Technologies for detection of HRPs in wastewater
• Chapter 5. Ecological safety hazards of wastewater
• Chapter 6. Human health hazards of wastewater
• Chapter 7. Assessment technologies for hazards/risks of wastewater
• Chapter 8. Physicochemical technologies for HRPs and risk control
• Chapter 9. Biological technologies for cHRPs and risk control
• Chapter 10. Technologies for bHRPs and risk control
• Chapter 11. Risk management policy for HRPs in wastewater
• Abbreviations
• Index