Review of risk from potential emerging contaminants in UK groundwater.

By M. Stuart, Dan J. Lapworth, E. Crane, A. Hart. Science of the Total Environment, 2012

683 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper provides a review of the types of emerging organic groundwater contaminants (EGCs) which are beginning to be found in the UK. EGCs are compounds being found in groundwater that were previously not detectable or known to be significant and can come from agricultural, urban and rural point sources. EGCs include nanomaterials, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, industrial compounds, personal care products, fragrances, water treatment by-products, flame retardants and surfactants, as well as caffeine and nicotine. Many are relatively small polar molecules which may not be effectively removed by drinking water treatment. Data from the UK Environment Agency's groundwater screening programme for organic pollutants found within the 30 most frequently detected compounds a number of EGCs such as pesticide metabolites, caffeine and DEET. Specific determinands frequently detected include pesticides metabolites, pharmaceuticals including carbamazepine and triclosan, nicotine, food additives and alkyl phosphates. This paper discusses the routes by which these compounds enter groundwater, their toxicity and potential risks to drinking water and the environment. It identifies challenges that need to be met to minimise risk to drinking water and ecosystems.

Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2240b32a2d861f4ad5d7b1b8f84bc3e6d68350b2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

1. Lúcia Santos
2. Isabel T Carvalho
3. Maria Gavrilescu

In Pollution

1. Lúcia Santos
2. Vicki Rhodes
3. H. Shaw
4. A. Hart
5. Isabel T Carvalho
6. A. Singer
7. Maria Gavrilescu

Citations in the corpus

• A review on environmental monitoring of water organic pollutants identified by EU guidelines. (2018, background): “micropollutants), contributes to the accumulation of some of them in the aquatic compartments, with potentially detrimental effects to aquatic ecosystems and to human health [4-8].”
• Review of Antimicrobial Resistance in the Environment and Its Relevance to Environmental Regulators (2016, background): “The biocides, i.e., triclosan, has been measured in UK aquifers in excess of 2 µg/L over a number of years (Stuart et al., 2012; Manamsa et al., 2016).”
• Antibiotics in the aquatic environments: A review of the European scenario. (2016, background): “However, little is currently known about the potential toxicological and ecological impact of ECs in aquatic ecosystems (Stuart et al., 2012; Bellenger and Cabana, 2014; Petrie et al., 2014), which explains the fact that most of these compounds are uncovered by current existing regulations on water…”
• Emerging pollutants in the environment: present and future challenges in biomonitoring, ecological risks and bioremediation. (2015, background): “these EPs can be associated with the impact of WWTP or other point sources (Table 4), more significantly than recognised hitherto [12,37,38].”
• Carbon-based nanomaterials for removal of chemical and biological contaminants from water: A review of mechanisms and applications (2015, background): “Many of these synthetic compounds, due to their recalcitrant molecular structures, are left largely untreated by conventional chemical and biological waste treatment processes, and have become significant issues in water treatment [2,73–77].”