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Team tackles chemical risk
 A study of two of SEQ’s major wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) has shown that they are consistently successful in removing most studied organic compounds by more than 90 percent.
A project team led by Dr Simon Toze from CSIRO investigated how effective the Luggage Point WWTP and Oxley Creek WWTP were in removing selected endocrine disrupting chemicals, as well as pharmaceuticals and personal care products.
Dr Toze said the WWTPs were performing well as a barrier in the recycled water train.
Comparisons were made on the basis of 11 different compounds including hormones, alkylphenols, pharmaceuticals and personal care products.
The results showed many compounds were very efficiently removed including caffeine (99.8 percent removal), estrogenic compounds (83.2–90.4 percent removal) and Ibuprofen (93.6–96.8 percent removal).
Dr Toze said, however, that in line with overseas studies it was found that the epilepsy drug carbamazepine was not removed through wastewater treatment processes.
“This is not a particular concern for the purified recycled water train, because the validation studies for the Western Corridor advanced water treatment plants demonstrated that carbamazepine is very efficiently removed through the advanced water treatment processes,” he said.
The team also took samples from different stages of treatment at Luggage Point and Oxley Creek WWTPs in order to better understand the removal of micropollutants during the treatment train.
They found anaerobic steps were less effective than aerobic steps (using oxygen) at removing the organic compounds studied.
Dr Toze said the study’s future directions would be on risk assessment and helping to answer the ‘what if’ questions that the public asked about in relation to what is contained in treated water.
“The results obtained so far indicate that we know about most of the chemicals in wastewater and their removal through treatment,” he said.
“There are, however, a very small amount we don’t know about and these need investigating.
“For example, we need to be proactive in looking at newer chemicals such as perfluorinates, the precursors to Teflon, and similar chemicals which have only recently begun to be studied.”
Dr Toze said the research team would investigate what detection methods were necessary to study a range of compounds, such as benzalkonium chloride (widely used in hospitals and laundries), perfluorinates, the fungicide propiconazole, the antidepressant venlafaxine, cytotoxic drugs, antivirals and selected antibiotics.
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