Micropollutants in the Urban Hydrological Cycle
The occurrence and fate of a mixture of Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products (PPCPs) has been a subject of a research of WWE since the beginning of 2000’s. The most common way to take care of human waste that include the PPCPs and other micropollutants is to mix them with water and flush them into the waste water that end up in water bodies and possibly to raw water of water works. In other words about two liters of urine per day, which contains most of the hormones, pharmaceuticals and their metabolites, is diluted with 120 liters of water (Finland) and directed to the urban hydrological cycle. The overall problem of PPCPs has been presented schematically by the classic figure introduced by the EU 5th Framework Project POSEIDON.
Chemicals in urban hydrological cycle POSEIDON (EVK1-CT-2000-00047)
We have studied the occurrence and removal efficiencies of selected PPCPs in conventional waste water treatment plants in Finland. Also the concentration of the same compounds have been followed in water bodies and raw water sources. The removal efficiencies of PPCPs in different kind of water treatment processes have been studied.
There is still, however, a lot of pressure to develop innovative methods to improve the removal efficiencies of anthropogenic micropollutants from the urban hydrological cycle by different approaches: source separation, enhancement of purification techniques and rising public awareness of the proper use and disposal of drugs and chemicals in the households and introducing the scheme of “green pharmacy/chemistry”. We have contributed on training of the researchers by coordinating the EU program TRITON Scheme (EVK1-CT-2002-80015) to provide training and assistance for research players for the assessment of the fate and removal of pharmaceuticals and estrogenic compounds released into the environment.
Researchers
Hilda Szabo
Tuula Tuhkanen