Abstract
Approaches that prioritise chemicals according to their importance as environmental contaminants have been developed by government agencies and private industries. However, it has been noticed that few approaches, such as one published by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), address the needs of the drinking water industry. There is also no generic approach to the selection, prioritisation and monitoring of organic contaminants in the drinking water value chain. To safeguard drinking water industry customers, it was necessary to develop a generic protocol to assist with the identification of a list of organic contaminants for monitoring in the drinking water value chain. Once the protocol was developed, it was validated in a prototype drinking water value chain. This paper describes the implementation of such a generic protocol. The exercise comprised of testing each step of the protocol, from selection of the ‘pool of organic contaminants’ (Step I) to recommending the final priority list of organic contaminants (Step VII). Successful implementation of the protocol took place in the Rand Water (South Africa) drinking water value chain (from catchment to tap). Expert judgment was emphasized during the implementation as each step was validated and the opinion of key stakeholders used to shape the process. The tailor-made prioritisation criteria, reflecting the drinking water industry perspective, proved to be successful in selecting and prioritising organic contaminants for monitoring in the drinking water value chain. The organic contaminants were successfully prioritised in 3 classes: short-term priority for analysis, medium-term priority for analysis and long-term priority for analysis. This is a very important guide to assist water utilities in optimising their resources while not compromising the role of public health protection. Finally, a priority list of organic contaminants was identified for use by Rand Water and other water utilities.
Highlights
Today’s vast chemical industry and its giant offspring, the production of synthetic organic chemicals (Middleton and Rosen, 1956), have introduced new challenges to the scientists and public officers engaged in providing and protecting public health through the provision of safe drinking water
The objective of this paper is to present the approach used to prioritise the organic contaminants, the outcome of implementing each step from selection to prioritisation, and the priority organic contaminants recommended for use by a case-study drinking water service provider, Rand Water (South Africa) and other water utilities
During the validation of the ‘pool of organic contaminants’, workshop attendees felt that most organic contaminants were already represented in the WHO guidelines for drinking water quality document, (3rd edition) published in 2004
Summary
Today’s vast chemical industry and its giant offspring, the production of synthetic organic chemicals (Middleton and Rosen, 1956), have introduced new challenges to the scientists and public officers engaged in providing and protecting public health through the provision of safe drinking water. The major outcome from this has been the detection of a number of more classic organic contaminants as well as the so-called ‘emerging organic contaminants’ (Kaj et al, 2005; Colvin, 2006; Richardson et al, 2002; Loganathan et al, 2007; Haukas et al, 2007; Miège et al, 2008; Oberdörster et al, 2006) Another challenge is the indication that most organic wastewater contaminants are not completely removed during conventional wastewater and drinking water production processes (Rodriguez-Mozaz et al, 2006; Majam and Thompson, 2007; Kim et al, 2007; Stackelberg et al, 2007; Miège et al, 2008; Balest et al, 2008; Okuda et al, 2008). Such contaminants might be present in drinking water distributed to the consumers and the number of organic contaminants of concern to the drinking water industry has increased
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