The most polluted waters are located around wastewater treatment plants, which don’t have the technology to eliminate new chemical compounds, reports Phys.org.
The website, reporting on a paper published in the journal Science of The Total Environment, says the plants can’t property treat the new compounds because legislation aimed at keeping pollution out of the waterways hasn’t yet caught up with the development of the chemical industry.
Asier Vallejo, one of the researchers, tells Phys.org: “The function of waste water treatment plants is to clean the waste that humans discharge into the water. What happens, however, is that most treatment plants are not equipped to eliminate the new chemical compounds appearing on the market. That is why even if they are discharged into rivers and seas in very low concentrations, they have serious consequences for fish because the flow is constant.”
As pharmaceutical residue and other micropollutants create new challenges in wastewater treatment as well as environmental concerns, water treatment and ozone technology company Primozone has launched a new knowledge-site, www.micropollutants.com, that covers the issue of reduction of micropollutants in wastewater.
Photo Credit: wastewater treatment via Shutterstock
