Dataset Information

Potable Water Reuse: What Are the Microbiological Risks?

ABSTRACT: PURPOSE OF REVIEW:With the increasing interest in recycling water for potable reuse purposes, it is important to understand the microbial risks associated with potable reuse. This review focuses on potable reuse systems that use high-level treatment and de facto reuse scenarios that include a quantifiable wastewater effluent component. RECENT FINDINGS:In this article, we summarize the published human health studies related to potable reuse, including both epidemiology studies and quantitative microbial risk assessments (QMRA). Overall, there have been relatively few health-based studies evaluating the microbial risks associated with potable reuse. Several microbial risk assessments focused on risks associated with unplanned (or de facto) reuse, while others evaluated planned potable reuse, such as indirect potable reuse (IPR) or direct potable reuse (DPR). The reported QMRA-based risks for planned potable reuse varied substantially, indicating there is a need for risk assessors to use consistent input parameters and transparent assumptions, so that risk results are easily translated across studies. However, the current results overall indicate that predicted risks associated with planned potable reuse scenarios may be lower than those for de facto reuse scenarios. Overall, there is a clear need to carefully consider water treatment train choices when wastewater is a component of the drinking water supply (whether de facto, IPR, or DPR). More data from full-scale water treatment facilities would be helpful to quantify levels of viruses in raw sewage and reductions across unit treatment processes for both culturable and molecular detection methods.

SUBMITTER: Nappier SP

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6779056 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Potable Water Reuse: What Are the Microbiological Risks?

Nappier Sharon P SP Soller Jeffrey A JA Eftim Sorina E SE

Current environmental health reports 20180601 2

<h4>Purpose of review</h4>With the increasing interest in recycling water for potable reuse purposes, it is important to understand the microbial risks associated with potable reuse. This review focuses on potable reuse systems that use high-level treatment and de facto reuse scenarios that include a quantifiable wastewater effluent component.<h4>Recent findings</h4>In this article, we summarize the published human health studies related to potable reuse, including both epidemiology studies and ...[more]

PMID: 29721701

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Project description:Wastewater reclamation and reuse have the potential to supplement water supplies, offering resiliency in times of drought and helping meet increased water demands associated with population growth. Non-potable water reuse represents the largest potential reuse market. Yet economic constraints for new water reuse infrastructure and safety concerns due to microbial water quality, and especially viral pathogen exposure, limit widespread implementation of water reuse. Cost-effective, real-time methods to measure or indicate viral quality of recycled water would do much to instill greater confidence in the practice. This manuscript discusses advancements in monitoring and modeling of viral health risks in the context of water reuse. First, we describe the current wastewater reclamation processes and treatment technologies with an emphasis on virus removal. Second, we review technologies for the measurement of viruses, both culture- and molecular-based, along with their advantages and disadvantages. We introduce promising viral surrogates and specific pathogenic viruses that can serve as indicators of viral risk for water reuse. We suggest metagenomic analyses for viral screening and flow cytometry for quantification of virus-like particles as new approaches to complement more traditional methods. Third, we describe modeling to assess health risks through quantitative microbial risk assessments (QMRAs), the most common strategy to couple data on virus concentrations with human exposure scenarios. We then explore the potential of artificial neural networks (ANNs) to incorporate suites of data from wastewater treatment processes, water quality parameters, and viral surrogates. We recommend ANNs as a means to utilize existing water quality data, alongside new complementary measures of viral quality, to achieve cost-effective strategies to assess risks associated with infectious human viruses in recycled water. Given the review, we conclude that technologies are ready for identifying and implementing viral surrogates for health risk reduction in the next decade. Incorporating modeling with monitoring data would likely result in more robust assessment of water reuse risk.

Project description:In the search for sustainable drinking water, many countries are weighing up the benefits of advanced treatment technologies as a proactive measure to assist with the transformation of treated wastewater into a source of water used for the production of potable water. We investigated the biological effects along a pilot plant with an advanced water treatment process, using zebrafish embryos at different stages of development. The study took an innovative approach, comparing phenotypic observations with whole genome responses. This enabled us to keep an open mind about which chemicals might be influencing the biological activity. There was no evidence of acute toxicity at any stage of treatment, but distinctive abnormalities – skeletal, cardiovascular and pigmentation – occurred in a small proportion of embryos along the treatment process, and in a tap water, that were not detected in the aquarium water control. Reverse osmosis (RO) reduced the concentration of measured chemical contaminants in the water the most, whilst eliminating the occurrence of abnormalities detected in the fish. In contrast, advanced oxidation appeared to reverse the benefits of RO treatment by increasing the frequency of teratogenic and sub-lethal abnormalities seen in embryos. Genomic analysis found alterations to the retinoid system, which was consistent with the teratogenic abnormalities observed. In addition, we found evidence of changes to metabolic pathways, including tryptophan metabolism associated with the production of melatonin required for the control of normal circadian rhythms. Although we cannot extrapolate these preliminary findings in zebrafish embryos to human or environmental health, we show that underexplored forms of biological activity (that existing Test Guidelines are not designed to capture) occur in treated wastewater effluent, and/or may be created depending on the type of advanced treatment process used. Although the identity of the culprit chemicals are unknown at this time, our innovative approach highlights the need for more research into the effects of chemicals on the retinoid system (and metabolism).

Dataset Information

Potable Water Reuse: What Are the Microbiological Risks?

Publications

Potable Water Reuse: What Are the Microbiological Risks?

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