Inclusion of emerging organic contaminants in groundwater monitoring plans

Lucrezia Lamastra,Matteo Balderacchi,Marco Trevisan

doi:10.1016/j.mex.2016.05.008

Lucrezia Lamastra, Matteo Balderacchi + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2016.05.008

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Journal: MethodsX	Publication Date: Jan 1, 2016
Citations: 52	License type: cc-by

Affiliation: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Abstract

Groundwater is essential for human life and its protection is a goal for the European policies. All the anthropogenic activities could impact on water quality.•Conventional pollutants and more than 700 emerging pollutants, resulting from point and diffuse source contamination, threat the aquatic ecosystem.•Policy-makers and scientists will have to cooperate to create an initial groundwater emerging pollutant priority list, to answer at consumer demands for safety and to the lack of conceptual models for emerging pollutants in groundwater.•Among the emerging contaminants and pollutants this paper focuses on organic wastewater contaminants (OWCs) mainly released into the environment by domestic households, industry, hospitals and agriculture. This paper starts from the current regulatory framework and from the literature overview to explain how the missing conceptual model for OWCs could be developed.•A full understanding of the mechanisms leading to the contamination and the evidence of the contamination must be the foundation of the conceptual model. In this paper carbamazepine, galaxolide and sulfamethozale, between the OWCs, are proposed as “environmental tracers” to identify sources and pathways ofcontamination/pollution.

Highlights

Following the prevision of the United Nations by 2050 the world’s population will reach 9.6 billion [107]
Among the emerging contaminants and pollutants this paper focuses on organic wastewater contaminants (OWCs) mainly released into the environment by domestic households, industry, hospitals and agriculture
The aim of this paper is to give advice on the investigative monitoring of groundwater, because research on OWCs and emerging pollutants in groundwater are needed for threshold of regulation in order to obtain reference values to evaluate the water quality and to ensure human health

Summary

Introduction

Following the prevision of the United Nations by 2050 the world’s population will reach 9.6 billion [107] This population rise will be supported by an increase of the agricultural and industrial activities that will produce a greater water stress due to an increased demand for freshwater and to an increased generation of wastewater. Emerging contaminants could be natural or synthetic substances that are not commonly monitored in the environment [102] They can encompass chemicals not previously included in national or international monitoring programmes but continuously introduced into the environment by anthropogenic activities [90], and well-known contaminants that have gained interest with the revelation of new aspects of their occurrence, fate or effects [22]. The ubiquity and the high number of potentially toxic compounds could lead to synergistic effects [85]

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