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International Symposium on Water in Environment

WINEC 2017: Water Management and the Environment: Case Studies pp 231–254Cite as

Occurrence and Removal of Emerging Micropollutants from Urban Wastewater

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Part of the book series: Water Science and Technology Library ((WSTL,volume 86))

Abstract

In the last few years, the issue of new dangerous micropollutants, penetrating from municipal wastewater into the environment, which can pose a threat to animals and plants, but also humans, has become very topical. These substances, the originator of which is our developed society, are completely out of the ordinary standards of wastewater treatment, and most of the commonly used purification technology is ineffective against them. The persistent and bioaccumulative nature of these substances brings major risk to wild live plants and animals because it affects their endocrine systems. It causes transcription of DNA and RNA. The immediate danger to humans is primarily the bioaccumulation potential of these substances and their binding to a solid soil matrix where they can be leached into groundwater and contaminated with drink water sources. The escape of these substances into the environment is primarily connected with the abundant use of chemical additives in various industries, with a separate chapter being agriculture, where the massive use of chlorine-based chemical pesticides for long years has completely infested a large amount of soil. Wastewater is one of the main gates of micropollutants entering the aquatic environment, especially those that are part of pharmaceutical products, such as hormonal contraceptives, which contain synthetic hormones that cause severe sex-mutagens changes in fish. However, the increased occurrence of micropollutants is not only related to the fact that these substances are abundantly overused, but also that the detection methods were able to capture these substances during the sub-20 years. From the time perspective, we are not yet able to determine their future environmental developments, and we do not know about interactions exist between them and other substances in the frame of sewage and treatment process, when that may induce new substances that can often be more dangerous than origins mother substances. Our aim should, therefore, be to make the processes and technologies for removing these substances from wastewater as efficiently as possible so as to prevent their free distribution to the environment. This section of the publication attempts to summarize the current knowledge of hazardous micropollutants in wastewater and the possibilities of their elimination.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Deconjugation—the most famous example of this process is the conversion of gluconic acid and sulfuric acid (conjugates) that occur in the female body after using hormonal contraceptives. Hormonal contraceptives containing ethinylestradiol, for example, go into the intestine where it is distributed and absorbed through the liver. From the liver, some of them continue to spread into the body, and they form conjugates that once again enter the intestine, where the bacteria are deconjugated back to the hormone that is absorbed again and the whole cycle is repeated (enterohepatic circulation) according to the latest studies. The process of conjugation and deconjugation takes place not only in the bodies of animals, but virtually throughout the ecosystem, also in sewerage, WWTP.

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Acknowledgements

This chapter has been worked out under the project No. LO1408 “AdMaS UP—Advanced Materials, Structures and Technologies”, supported by Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports under the “National Sustainability Programme I”.

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  1. Centre AdMaS, VUT Brno, Brno, Czech Republic

    Petr Hlavínek & Adéla Žižlavská

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  1. Petr Hlavínek
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Correspondence to Petr Hlavínek .

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  1. Technical University of Košice, Košice, Slovakia

    Martina Zelenakova

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Hlavínek, P., Žižlavská, A. (2018). Occurrence and Removal of Emerging Micropollutants from Urban Wastewater. In: Zelenakova, M. (eds) Water Management and the Environment: Case Studies. WINEC 2017. Water Science and Technology Library, vol 86. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-79014-5_11

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