Dwindling Water Supplies Make Every Drop Count

 Drought and chronic water shortages played a significant role in sparking Syria’s civil war and in unrest throughout much of the Middle East, water experts now believe.

Around the world, water demand already exceeds supply in regions with more than 40 percent of the world’s population. That may climb to 60 percent in the coming decade, a new study has found.

“Water-scarce regions can’t grow enough food to feed their own people,” said co-author Manzoor Qadir of United Nations University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).

About 70 percent of the world’s freshwater – and up to 95 percent in some countries – is used for irrigation. There is intense competition for freshwater between municipal, industrial, and agricultural uses. Increasingly, agriculture has been losing out, particularly in water-stressed regions, Qadir told IPS.

Between 2006 and 2011, up to 60 percent of Syria’s land experienced its worst ever drought and a series of crop failures. In 2009, the U.N. reportedthat over 800,000 Syrians lost their livelihoods and fled to cities as result of the drought.

The entire Mediterranean region is undergoing a prolonged drought that has been linked to climate change, according to a recent U.S. study. If climate-altering carbon emissions continue at current rates, droughts in the region will worsen and lengthen.

Drought In Sri Lanka

As water supplies fall, many regions are using urban wastewater, a very valuable resource if it is treated properly, says the study “Global, regional, and country level need for data on wastewater generation, treatment, and use“, published Sep. 5 in the journal Agricultural Water Management.

This is the first study to look at how wastewater is used in 181 countries. One of the key findings is that only 55 countries have good data. Synthesising what data there are, researchers found that high-income countries treat 70 percent of their wastewater while middle-income countries treat 28 to 38 percent. Just eight percent of wastewater generated in low-income countries undergoes any kind of treatment.

“From the earliest of times, most wastewater has truly been wasted. However, it is a vast resource if we reclaim it properly, which includes the separation of municipal from industrial wastewater,” said UNU-INWEH Director Zafar Adeel.

The volume of wastewater potentially available worldwide each year is equivalent to 14 months of outflow from the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, Adeel told IPS.

In poor, water-scarce countries, wastewater is widely used to irrigate foodlands – some estimate as much as 300 million hectares producing 10 percent of the world’s food, the study says.

However, there is little data to confirm this. It is often a country’s ‘dirty little secret’ that much of the food consumed in urban areas is grown using untreated wastewater.

Wastewater is valuable because it has very high level of nutrients, including potash, nitrogen and phosphorus, eliminating the need and cost of fertilisers. However, untreated wastewater can transmit diseases such as cholera. Chile experienced cholera outbreaks and banned the use of untreated wastewater in 1992.

“Disease outbreaks from using wastewater do happen but it is rarely cited as the cause,” said Qadir.

One reason is that few studies have been done. A few years ago Qadir and colleagues discovered higher rates of waterborne diseases like gastroenteritis in children in the Mediterranean who were eating food grown using untreated wastewater.

In the 1990s, fruit and vegetable exports from Jordan were banned for similar reasons. Jordan has since implemented an aggressive campaign to rehabilitate and improve wastewater treatment plants and introduced enforceable standards.

“Israel uses nearly every drop of its wastewater with specific uses determined by the quality”, Qadir said.

Many homes in California have separate grey and black water collection systems. Grey water from showers and dishwashing is reused to water lawns and gardens, the report said.

People are generally reluctant to eat food grown using wastewater but it is perfectly safe if treated properly, Qadir stressed.

“Unfortunately, water treatment is not seen as a priority in many countries.”

Source: Inter Press Service

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Choosing a Countertop or Undersink Drinking Water Filter

by Gene Franks

Standard vs . Proprietary

If you purchase a water filter with a “proprietary” design, you won’t have to choose a filter cartridge for it because the filter manufacturer has chosen it for you. In other words, if you purchase an Aquasana, you have only one cartridge choice: the standard Aquasana. If you purchase a Multi-Pure filter, Multi-Pure has already decided which cartridge you will use: the standard Multi-Pure.

Aquasana and Multi-Pure provide you exactly the same cartridge whether you have city water with chlorine or with chloramines or whether your city fluoridates its water or not. If your well water has a rotten egg odor, if it has sand, or silt, or iron, or nitrates, or bacteria, with Multi-Pure and Aquasana it’s all the same: you’ll get the same filter cartridge you would get if you lived in Cleveland or Tucson.

Proprietary Countertop.  Price: $260. Replacement Cartridge Price: $70.  Cartridge Styles Available: 1. 

Standard Sized Countertop.  Price: $77. (With Lifetime Guarantee). Standard Cartridge Replacement Price: $21. Cartridge Styles Available:  Countless.  

If, however, you purchase a water filter that uses a standard-sized 9.75” X 2.5”cartridge, you have literally hundreds of excellent filter cartridges to choose from. Moreover, if you bought your filter from Sterling Springs, you can replace the cartridge with one purchased from Pure Water Products. Or vice versa.

Standard sizes got to be standard for a reason. They are a convenient and practical size that offers good performance in a compact package.

The variety of filter cartridges available in the standard 9.75” X 2.5” format is amazing. Every major filter cartridge manufacturer provides filter cartridges in this size.

In addition, with standard-sized units you have the option of multiple cartridges. Standard-sized housings can be easily joined to form multi-canister units. Multiple housings, of course, allow cartridges to be mixed and matched to created a total filtration unit with much more capacity and treatment range than is possible with a one-size-fits-all proprietary unit.

Here are some examples of the excellent cartridges available for standard sized-filters:

MatriKX CTO Plus carbon block, rated for 20,000 gallons of chlorine reduction, it’s a great filter for chlorine, chloramines, VOCs, chemicals in general, plus excellent taste/odor performance. A very tight nominal 0.6 micron filter.

MatriKX VOC. A tight 0.6 micron coconut shell carbon block. Designed for overall performance on chlorine and chemicalsd, but is especially good at VOC reduction.It’s a great taste/odor enhancer as well.

MatriKX PB1. A great one-cartridge drinking water filter, it is a tight 0.5 micron carbon block (too tight for use in reverse osmosis units) with lead reduction and cyst removal capability.

Doulton Super Sterasyl Imperial. An oversized-Doulton ceramic cartridge with a carbon core, this is one of several Doulton cartridges made to fit standard housings. Its strong point is removal of bacteria and cysts, but it’s also a good all-around chemical filter. While Doulton undersink and countertop units command a premium price, the regular-sized cartridges can fit into any standard housing.

Pentek ChlorPlus 10. A tough Pentek carbon block made with specialty carbon aimed toward removal of chloramines from city water, the cartridge has excellent all around carbon performance for taste/odor and chemical reduction.

In addition to carbon cartridges, there are many standard-sized “media” cartridges that treat nitrates, fluoride, arsenic, iron, rotten-egg odor, low pH, scale buildup, hardness, high TDS and more.

Another important consideration in deciding between standard vs. proprietary units is pricing. Standard sizing, of course, means competition, which keeps pricing fair. It is not uncommon for a high quality 9.75” X 2.5” carbon block cartridge to cost ¼ the price of a propriety cartridge.

Nominal vs. Absolute

If you’re puzzled by what filter makers mean when they call their filters “absolute” or “nominal,” technical wizard Pure Water Annie will clear the matter up for you. 

Water filtration devices are rated by the sizes of particles that will pass through them. The ratings are normally expressed in microns.

Micron ratings are applied to all types of filtration devices, including even granular filters. It is said, for example, that a sand filter is roughly a 10 micron filter, meaning that it filters out particles ten microns and larger in girth. Carbon block filters are also assigned micron sizes, but micron ratings are most meaningful in comparing sediment filters.

The micron is a standard measure of size that is used by filter makers. The diameter of a human hair is about 90 microns. Sediment filters are used to catch particles 1/300 of that.

Most sediment filters are given ratings by their manufacturers that describe their effectiveness at removing particles down to a specified size. The most common of these are”nominal” and “absolute.”

Nominal, according to the Water Quality Association (WQA), means that the filter will filter out at least 85% of the particles of the size it is rated for. In other words, a filter that is rated as a 1 micron nominal can be expected to pick out 85% of the particles that are 1 micron or larger from the water that passes through it.

Absolute, theoretically, means that the filter will reject virtually all of the particles of the given size. The usual expectation is a 3-log rejection–or 99.9%. Absolute ratings are usually used for the tightest filters and for purposes where efficiency really matters. For example, if a filter maker promises removal of E. coli, more or less 85% efficiency isn’t good enough. If you’re going to trust your life to the filter, you expect an absolute 3-log or 4-log rating at the very least.

The problem with the absolute vs. nominal system is that there is really no universal standard that assures uniformity. Some makers of filters for non-critical applications, for example, might consider 70% rejection suitable for a nominal filter. Definitions vary from one manufacturer to another, and there is really no way for the end user to verify the claim. 

For most common filtration issues filters rated as “nominal” are used.  For example, a nominal 5 micron sediment filter is a standard size used in much residential water treatment.

Keep in mind that tighter is not always better.  The lower the micron rating of a filter, the more it restricts flow.  An absolute 1 micron filter is normally not a good choice for a residential sediment filter because there will be too much pressure loss.  If you put in a filter to remove sand, a filter with a low micron rating is not only unnecessary, but it will also become clogged much faster than a looser filter.

Reference:  The Pure Water Occasional.

Eastern rivers ‘on Rolaids’ raise concerns

Study links rising alkalinity to acid rain, urbanization

 by Timothy B. Wheeler

 Baltimore Sun

Fresh water isn’t what it used to be. New research has found that human activity has caused subtle but significant changes in the basic makeup of rivers in Maryland and elsewhere, with potential consequences for public water use and the health of aquatic ecosystems.

In a survey said to be the first of its kind, researchers say two-thirds of nearly 100 rivers and streams checked across the eastern United States, including the Patuxent and Potomac rivers, have become noticeably more alkaline over the past 25 to 60 years. It’s as if they’d been fed a steady dose of antacid medicine, “like rivers on Rolaids,” said Sujay S. Kaushal, a University of Maryland geologist and the study’s lead author.

Several years ago Kaushal and other colleagues documented a gradual increase in salt levels in streams in the Northeast, which at the time they attributed to runoff of road salt. But, Kaushal said, a closer look at stream sampling from the U.S. Geological Survey and other sources found the rising salinity also tied to the rivers’ increasing alkalinity.

“We weren’t expecting it to be this widespread,” he said. “These trends that we’re seeing in the Schuylkill River and Potomac River, these trends are troubling.”

Nor did the scientists expect to find that their leading suspect for changing river chemistry is an environmental menace thought vanquished long ago.

At first, they figured the rising alkalinity seen across the eastern United States came from landscape changes in a river’s watershed, such as mining or urban and suburban development. But the changes in river chemistry were so extensive that they figured something more, and more widespread, was going on.

They concluded it had to be acid rain.

Blamed for killing forests and rendering New England lakes lifeless in the 1970s, acid rain has been reduced dramatically in the decades since by government regulation of coal-burning power plants and motor vehicle exhaust, two leading sources of pollution that turned precipitation acidic.

They concluded it had to be acid rain.

Blamed for killing forests and rendering New England lakes lifeless in the 1970s, acid rain has been reduced dramatically in the decades since by government regulation of coal-burning power plants and motor vehicle exhaust, two leading sources of pollution that turned precipitation acidic.

Rainfall today is much less acidic than it used to be, experts say, but all sources of acid rain haven’t been muzzled. Rain in Maryland and elsewhere is still corrosive enough to dissolve limestone and other rocks.

“Despite the great progress we’ve made in controlling oxides of nitrogen and sulfur from smokestacks and tailpipes, the precipitation is still acidic, unhealthy for us and streams,” said Russell R. Dickerson, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Maryland.

The minerals released when rocks dissolve under acid rainfall tend to be alkaline, Kaushal explained. And those minerals aren’t just neutralizing the acidity in precipitation, but overwhelming it, he added.

The effect is pronounced in urban areas like Baltimore, he said, and even in streams like the Gwynns Falls, where there isn’t much natural limestone in the watershed. But there, he pointed out, “you have pavement, sidewalks and concrete,” with limestone often a major ingredient. They dissolve under acidic rain as well, in a process dubbed “chemical weathering.”

Baltimore’s streams also may get an extra dose of alkalinity antacid from its leaky sewers, Kaushal suggested, because wastewater can be alkaline.

“We think that acid rain is affecting all of them, coupled with mining and land use,” he said. “Basically when you have dissolving either of the limestone or concrete, that’s a kind of universal mechanism contributing to river alkalization.”

Just as some mysteries remain about how rivers’ chemistry is changing, the impacts also are uncertain, but could be problematic. Many streams in the Chesapeake Bay region are suffering from an overdose of nutrients. Increasing alkalinity coupled with an abundance of nitrogen, one of those nutrients, can generate ammonia in the water, which can kill fish. The changes also may accelerate algae growth, already a problem in bay waters.

With the rising salinity of rivers and streams, calcium concentrations are increasing as well, making the water “harder” for human usage, Kaushal said. That can complicate everything from showers to doing laundry, and can lead to “scaling” in water pipes, a buildup of calcium that constricts the flow.

William P. Stack, deputy program director of the Center for Watershed Protection, said he alerted Kaushal to the increasing chloride concentrations in Baltimore’s raw water supply several years ago when he was with the city Department of Public Works. Stack said he also noticed the city’s water was gradually getting harder. While the hardness is not a health threat, and can be treated to counter it, he said he still found it troubling.

“The broader concern is we’re picking up a signature in the ambient concentration or quality of our waters,” Stack said. “What else is going on that we’re not picking up? And do we really fully know what the ramifications are?”

Source: Baltimore Sun

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ANSI/NSF: What’s it all about?

by Gene Franks

Editor’s Note:  This article first appeared in the Pure Water Occasional for April 2010. It has since been expanded.

A standard question about water treatment products these days is to ask if they are “NSF certified.” For our products, the answer isn’t simple. Some of them carry full third-party certification obtained by the manufacturer, some have certification on some of their components, and some aren’t certified at all. And some have certification from third parties that have no affiliation with NSF.

“Is your product NSF certified?”  implies–and most take it to mean–that there is some federally sponsored (N for national) certifying agency, probably a branch of the EPA, that  “certifies” products the way that USDA puts its stamp on the rump of a dead pig making it an officially edible ham.  That isn’t the way it works at all.

Why  would KX Industries not just have its PB1 cartridge NSF/ANSI certified? Well, cost for one thing. It costs literally tens of thousands of dollars to obtain and maintain NSF/ANSI certification on a single product.  But also because it is a “component” rather than a full product, like an RO unit.  Common sense tells you that no matter how good the filter cartridge or the RO membrane, if you put it into a poorly manufactured, defective end product it will not produce a good result.  As a single example, no matter how good a filter cartridge is, if it is put into an inferior undersink water filter with a cheap faucet that leaches lead into the water, the cartridge certification means nothing. Performance certification has to be done for the entire device, not the individual components.

Many manufacturers use certification as a selling tool.  They spend  large amounts maintaining product certification and they advertise their products accordingly, often with the implication that uncertified products are not to be trusted.  Other manufacturers–KX Industries, for example, as well as many other highly respected manufacturers–rely as much on their own reputation and experience as third-party certification to sell their products.  The lower price they are able to charge because of the the money saved on certification gives an added selling advantage.

Certification is important.  It gives the customer confidence that the product meets a certain standard–either in materials it is made from or in its performance.  But if you limit yourself to products that are NSF/ANSI certified you may be depriving yourself of some really superior products as well as spending more than you need to.

“Let the buyer beware” is a two-edged sword.  It isn’t good to buy an inferior product, but no one likes the idea of paying an extra $30 for a filter cartridge to support the manufacturer’s advertising campaign.

Source: Pure Water Occasional.

  Molasses Spill Could Cause Substantial Damage to Marine Life

State officials are rushing to head off an environmental and health disaster in Honolulu Harbor, where nearly a quarter million gallons of molasses from a ruptured pipeline have caused a massive marine die-off.

On Wednesday, colorful surgeonfish, pufferfish and eels were swaying limp or lifeless in the currents.

How much damage the molasses spill has caused was still being assessed. But health officials estimate that it’s killing thousands of fish and damaging coral reefs.

State officials also warn there could be even more problems if they don’t quickly remove as many fish as possible from the contaminated waters. They worry that the dead fish could lure sharks into the harbor and Keehi Lagoon, where the plume of molasses has spread.

And the decaying fish could cause even more harm to the marine ecosystem.

“As fish die, oxygen is further sucked out of the water, leading to a domino effect of environmental impacts,” said Gary Gill, deputy director for environmental health for the state Department of Health.

The massive numbers of dead fish could even cause algae blooms that further deplete the water’s oxygen levels. Algae blooms can sicken or kill fish, as well as create elevated toxins and bacterial growth that can make people ill, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Source: Honolulu Civil Beat

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Avon Park stops water fluoridation

 by Marc Valero

Published: September 5, 2013

Editor’s Note: The piece below illustrates one of the overlooked issues of fluoridation: the lack of “quality control” in dispensing it, especially at small city water plants. Fluoride is a powerful poison. Adding it to a public water system it in a haphazard fashion is beyond irresponsible.  The story below describes the folly of dispensing a power full drug in widely varying dosages strengths to patients who take as little or as much as they choose. Please keep in mind as you read this that fluoride is a much more powerful poison that virtually any drug prescribed in carefully controlled doses by physicians. – Hardly Waite.

AVON PARK – Citing “no quality control,” City Manager Julian Deleon has stopped the injection of fluoride into the city’s drinking water.

Deleon said he contacted the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to request permission to discontinue the fluoridation practice. The fluoride injection system has technology problems, he said.

The water demand drops off “drastically” during the very early morning hours such as around 2 a.m., Deleon noted.

The problem is that the fluoride injection pump has a fixed speed so when water demand is low it continues to pump the same amount of fluoride as during the periods of peak demand, he said.

“Based on my evaluation, we have no quality control over fluoride injection into the water,” Deleon said.

Adding fluoride to drinking water to fight tooth decay has been a controversial issue in many parts of the world for years. There have been recent news reports over the fluoride debate from Alberta, Canada (Lethbridge Herald) and New South Wales, Australia (Sydney Morning News).

A “concerned constitute” contacted State Rep. Cary Pigman, R-Avon Park about the Avon Park fluoride issue.

An email from Pigman’s office to Deleon asked if it was true that the water would no longer be fluoridated?

Avon Park’s Fluoride Injection System

Deleon replied to Pigman’s office, “As a professional engineer in the State of Florida, I did not deem the system capable of providing adequate quality control and safeguards in the injection of fluoride into the water supply.”

Deleon’s email included a link to 50 Reasons to Oppose Fluoride by the Fluoride Action Network at fluoridealert.org.

The network states that the dose cannot be controlled.

Once fluoride is put in the water it is impossible to control the dose each individual receives because people drink different amounts of water. Being able to control the dose a patient receives is critical, according to the FAC. Some people, such as manual laborers, athletes, diabetics and people with kidney disease, drink substantially more water than others.

Deleon explained to Highlands Today that the city operates three water treatment plants, but only the plant at the airport was injecting fluoride into the water.

It would take a hydraulic modeling study to determine what areas of the city received the fluoride, but based on his “best judgement” it appears that everyone north of Main Street was getting fluoride, Deleon said.

Everyone south of Main Street probably was not getting fluoride because there is no fluoride injection at the Glenwood Avenue nor the Crystal Lake water plants, he said.

Deleon briefed the city council last night on his concerns about the fluoride injection system.

The fluoride issue was added to the Sept. 4 city council agenda for the meeting between the council and the police pension board.

The City of Sebring injects fluoride into the drinking water at five of its seven water plants. Water Production Supervisor Jay Angell said they try to maintain a fluoride level of 0.80 parts per million.

The system has a 100-gallon bulk tank of fluoride, which feeds into a 10-gallon “day tank,” he explained.

“The pump itself feeds out of the day tank so that if there were ever to be a malfunction, the most it could ever pump out in a 24-hour period would be that 10 gallons,” Angell said.

Each of the five water plants uses about 1 1/2 to 2 gallons of fluoride per day, he said. There are no fluoridation facilities at the Highlands Ridge nor the Sebring Regional Airport water plants, which were private facilities the city purchased about a year ago.

“We just haven’t gotten around to incorporating the fluoride into that yet,” Angell said.

The Town of Lake Placid has never added fluoride to its water.

Utility Director Gary Freeman said, “There is no particular reason why we don’t do it, but it has never been done. It hasn’t been pursued.”

No one has suggested that the city should treat the water with fluoride, he said.

Source: Highlands Today.

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What’s in Urine? 3,000 Chemicals and Counting

by Gahar Gholipouor

Looking for an encyclopedia of pee? Scientists have laid out the entire chemical composition of human urine, revealing that more than 3,000 compounds are found in the fluid, and have published it all in an online database.

In the study, which took seven years to complete, the researchers found that at least 3,079 compounds can be detected in urine. Seventy-two of these compounds are made by bacteria, while 1,453 come from the body itself. Another 2,282 come from diet, drugs, cosmetics or environmental exposure (some compounds belong to more than one group).

“Urine is an incredibly complex biofluid. We had no idea there could be so many different compounds going into our toilets,” said study researcher David Wishart, professor of biology and computing science at the University of Alberta.

The complete list of all metabolites that can be detected in human urine using current technologies has been placed into an online public database called the Urine Metabolome Database.The word metabolome refers to the complete collection of metabolites, which are the products of metabolism and include hormones, vitamins and other molecules.

A favorite among fluids

“Urine has long been a ‘favored’ biofluid among metabolomics researchers,” because it is sterile and can be obtained easily in large volumes, the scientists wrote in their study published September 4 in the journal PLOS ONE.

However, the chemical complexity of urine has made it a difficult substance to fully understand, the researchers said. As a biological waste material, urine typically contains metabolic breakdown products from a wide range of foods, drinks, drugs, environmental contaminants, waste metabolites of the body and bacterial by-products.

Compared to other body fluids such as saliva or cerebrospinal fluid, urine contains about five to 10 times more compounds, and shows a larger chemical diversity, the researchers found. The compounds found in human urine fall into 230 different chemical classes.

“Given that there are only 356 chemical classes in the entire human metabolome, this certainly demonstrates the enormous chemical diversity found in urine,” the researchers said.

The researchers also found that more than 480 compounds in urine were not previously reported to be in blood, contrary to the long-standing idea that the collection of chemicals in urine is a subset of compounds found in the blood.

Why so many chemicals?

“The fact that so many compounds seem to be unique to urine likely has to do with the fact that the kidneys do an extraordinary job of concentrating certain metabolites from the blood,” the researchers said.

To find the chemicals in urine, the researchers used a variety of techniques, including nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, gas chromatography, mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography. They analyzed urine samples from 22 healthy people, and scoured more than 100 years of scientific literature about human urine to supplement their findings.

The chemical composition of urine  may be of interest to physicians, nutritionists and environmental scientists because it reveals medical conditions, as well as information about what a person has consumed, and what chemicals he or she as been exposed to in the environment.

The database of urine chemical composition will continue to grow as new techniques and instruments are developed to identify additional compounds, the scientists said.

“This is certainly not the final word on the chemical composition of urine,” Wishart said.

Source: Live Science.

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Drugs found in Lake Michigan, miles from sewage outfalls

By Brian Bienkowski

Environmental Health News

Prescription drugs are contaminating Lake Michigan two miles from Milwaukee’s sewage outfalls, suggesting that the lake is not diluting the compounds as most scientists expected, according to new research. This ability of the drugs to travel and remain at relatively high concentrations means that fish and other aquatic life are exposed, so there could be “some serious near-shore impacts,” said Rebecca Klaper, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In addition, Milwaukee draws its drinking water from Lake Michigan, although no pharmaceuticals have been detected in the city’s water. The researchers reported that 14 of the chemicals “were found to be of medium or high ecological risk,” and that the concentrations “indicate a significant threat to the health of the Great Lakes.” Nevertheless, it is not clear what, if any, effects the drugs are having on fish and other creatures in Lake Michigan.

September 5, 2013

Prescription drugs are contaminating Lake Michigan two miles from Milwaukee’s sewage outfalls, suggesting that the lake is not diluting the compounds as most researchers expected, according to new research.

“In a body of water like the Great Lakes, you’d expect dilution would kick in and decrease concentrations, and that was not the case here,” said Dana Kolpin, a U.S. Geological Survey research hydrologist based in Iowa.

It is not clear what, if any, effects the drugs are having on fish and other creatures in Lake Michigan. But this ability to travel and remain at relatively high concentrations means that aquatic life is exposed, so there could be “some serious near-shore impacts,” said Rebecca Klaper, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and senior author of the study published in the journal Chemosphere.

In addition, Milwaukee draws its drinking water from Lake Michigan, although no pharmaceuticals have been found in the city’s water, according to Milwaukee Water Works.

The scientists tested effluent from two sewage outfalls and water and sediment from Lake Michigan (up to two miles from the outfalls) for 54 chemicals used in pharmaceuticals and personal care products.

Twenty-seven chemicals were found in the lake, with four found most frequently: an antidiabetic drug called metformin, caffeine, the antibiotic sulfamethoxazole and triclosan, an antibacterial and antifungal compound found in some soaps, toothpastes and other consumer products.

“Wastewater treatment plants are simply not designed to remove these chemicals,” Klaper said. “This tells us we shouldn’t assume that dilution solves the problem of putting these into the environment.”

Metformin was detected at the highest levels – up to 840 parts per trillion one mile from the outfalls, and up to 160 parts per trillion two miles away.

The researchers reported that 14 of the chemicals “were found to be of medium or high ecological risk,” and that the concentrations “indicate a significant threat to the health of the Great Lakes, particularly near shore organisms.”

Of those, triclosan has been the most researched; it has proven acutely toxic to algae and can act as a hormone disruptor in fish.

“You’re not going to see fish die-offs [from pharmaceuticals] but subtle changes in how the fish eat and socialize that can have a big impact down the road,” said Kolpin, who did not participate in the study. “With behavior changes and endocrine disruption, reproduction and survival problems may not rear their ugly head for generations.”

Previous research has linked other pharmaceutical drugs in fish to slower reaction times to predators, altered eating habits and anxiety.

There is a lot of research measuring pharmaceuticals in water, so “now we need to figure out what impact they may have,” Kolpin said.

“The problem is the effluent and water don’t have one compound but a chemical mixture soup,” Kolpin said. “It’s going to be hard to tease out which of these compounds may do harm” to people or fish.

Pharmaceutical and personal care product compounds are found in wastewater around the world. Studies have consistently found prescription drugs in drinking water at parts-per-trillion levels. U.S. Geological Survey scientists sampled 74 waterways used for drinking water in 25 states in 2008 and found 53 had one or more of the three dozen pharmaceuticals they were testing for in their water. The compounds mostly get into sewage through people excreting them.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers pharmaceuticals an “emerging concern,” and has concluded that the chemicals may pose risks to wildlife and humans. There are currently no federal regulations of the compounds in waste or drinking water. However, 12 pharmaceuticals are currently on the EPA’s Contaminant Candidate List, which are chemicals that may require regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

“You cannot blame the wastewater plants, they’re not out of compliance and there’s no incentive to start changing their technologies,” Kolpin said.

Klaper said the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District does a much better job than other plants at removing many compounds. But they’re just not equipped to handle the volume.

“For example, we found quite a bit of caffeine in the lake, and they’re removing about 90 percent of the caffeine that comes in for treatment,” she said. “They can’t remove everything.”

With pharmaceuticals increasingly flowing into plants, capturing the compounds is going to be a challenge for not only Milwaukee but for treatment plants across the country, said Kevin Shafer, executive director of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.

“At the time wastewater treatment plants were developed, these compounds were just not an issue,” Shafer said.

Shafer and colleagues are researching ways to bolster their pharmaceutical capture, including testing carbon filter technology.

Shafer said the carbon filters have a “good response but are very expensive and geared toward lower flows at smaller treatment plants.” The department also has collected 21 tons of unused medicines since 2006 so people don’t flush them down toilets.

There won’t be a silver bullet to tackle pharmaceuticals in wastewater, said Olga Lyandres, a research manager with the Alliance for the Great Lakes organization. But, with about 40 million people relying on the Great Lakes for drinking water, there needs to be more urgency in keeping these compounds out of the lakes.

“The development and use of new technologies needs to be a priority,” she said. “And we really need increased monitoring by the facilities and the EPA to keep tabs on what’s there.”

The new study hopefully will spur awareness of the water cycle in the region, Lyandres said.

“People should reconsider the notion that the Great Lakes are so large that this stuff cannot hurt us,” she said. “The stuff you excrete and wash down the drain ends up in the same bodies of water that you drink out of.”

Article Source: Environmental Health News.

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 Pollutants from Plant Kill Thousands of Fish in Chinese River

HONG KONG — Thousands of dead fish floating along a 19-mile stretch of a river in Hubei Province in central China were killed by pollutants emitted by a local chemical plant, provincial environmental officials said Wednesday.

Environmental protection officials said tests on water taken from the Fu River upstream from the metropolis of Wuhan revealed that extremely high levels of ammonia in the water were caused by pollution from a plant owned by the Hubei Shuanghuan Science and Technology Company.

The tests, conducted by environmental officials from Xiaogan City, revealed ammonia concentrations downstream from the plant as high as 196 milligrams per liter. The World Health Organization notes that naturally occurring ammonia appears in surface water at concentrations of about 12 milligrams per liter, while the similar figure for drinking water is around 0.02 milligrams per liter.

Shares in Hubei Shuanghuan were suspended from trading on the Shenzhen stock market Wednesday pending the release of an announcement. Calls to the company’s headquarters were not answered on Wednesday. Provincial officials ordered the company’s plant to cease production while the cause of the leak was investigated.

The plant produces sodium carbonate, used in making glass, and ammonium chloride for fertilizer, according to local news media reports. It has been cited for environmental violations four times since 2008, said Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Chinese nongovernmental organization that tracks air and water pollution.

“Each time it was ordered to be corrected, but this demonstrates that enforcement is way too weak and the cost of violations way too low,” Mr. Ma said.

People living along the river said they first noticed fish dying on Monday morning, and a sickening stench began to fill the air, China National Radio reported. About 110 tons of dead fish have been cleared from the river, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Wednesday.

Environmental officials said the river was not used as a source of drinking water, and they urged residents not to panic. Spills in China have often set off runs on bottled water because of fears of contaminated supplies.

China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection said water pollution was a serious concern, with industrial spills, farm runoff and untreated sewage all factors in degrading water quality. As of last year, nearly a third of the sections of major rivers it monitored were so degraded that the water was unfit for human contact, the ministry said in its annual State of Environmental Quality report, released in June.

The Fu River flows into the Yangtze, China’s longest river and the source of drinking water for millions. Spills into the Yangtze and its tributaries remain a continuing problem despite huge investments in reducing pollution, Mr. Ma said.

“Even though it has a large volume of water, with 40 percent of China’s wastewater dumped into this watershed we are concerned about the health of this river and the quality of its water,” he said.

Source: NY Times.

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