Making waves: Improving removal performance of conventional wastewater treatment plants on endocrine disrupting
Ze-Hua Liu1, Zhi Dang2, Hua Yin3
1School of Environment and Energy, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006, Guangdong, China; Key Lab Pollution Control & Ecosystem Restoration in Industry Cluster, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou 510006, Guangdong, China; Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Solid Wastes Pollution Control and Recycling, Guangzhou, 510006, Guangdong, China; Guangdong Provincial Engineering and Technology Research Center for Environment Risk Prevention and Emergency Disposal, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006, Guangdong, China.
Abstract:
Endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) are well known emerging contaminants, which have the capacity to elicit negative effects on endocrine systems of both humans and wildlife. As the conventional wastewater treatment plants cannot stably remove these EDCs, post-treatment with advanced chemical oxidation methods such as ozonation are proven effective to further remove EDCs, but this additional treatment increase the wastewater treatment cost, which is impractical for worldwide application. To find potential alternative effective method, this work presents the importance of EDCs conjugates. Specifically, two important facts are described: 1) concentrations of EDCs conjugates in raw municipal wastewater vary with temperature, and their existence results in underestimated removal performance of WWTPs; 2) Strategies to enhance the cleavage rates of EDCs conjugates are most effective to improve the observed removal performance of conventional WWTPs on EDCs. Further work should be performed to check whether effective solutions can be found to increase their cleavage rates.
Related Concept Videos
Enhanced Elimination of Poison
Antidotes serve a crucial role in counteracting the effects of poison by inhibiting enzymes responsible for producing harmful drug metabolites. In some cases, these toxic metabolites can be neutralized by endogenous cosubstrates, which are maintained at specific concentrations to prevent interaction with cellular macromolecules and subsequent cell death.
Renal excretion is the...
Bioremediation
Phase II Conjugation Reactions: Overview
Extracorporeal Removal of Drugs: Hemoperfusion and Hemofiltration
Drug Elimination by Renal Route: Tubular Secretion
Drug Metabolism: Phase II Reactions


