Urban and Rural Wastewater Management: Overview of Fate, Transport, and Toxicity of Contaminants.

The human life-span remarkably improved and increased over the last century due to the discovery and use of new chemicals. As a result, disposal and excretion of these chemcials (known as contaminants of emerging concern) in domestic wastewater from centralized and decentralized facilities is now a main source of these contaminants in our waterways. Increasing concern of environmental impacts prompted researchers to detect these chemicals in a variety of environmental matrices (soil, water, plants, aquatic and terrestrial organisms). It is now known that some contaminants are naturally degraded, while others resist degradation and persist in environmental matrices. Concerns of groundwater and surface water contamination due to discharge of domestic wastewater from decentralized onsite and centralized facilities exist.  Situations where emerging contaminants are a concern are aquatic systems and shallow groundwater. Research has suggested that many of emerging contaminants can be toxic to aquatic organisms and some plants can bioaccumulate.  This overview presentation will discuss the fate, transport, and toxicity of three classes of emerging contaminants: pharmaceuticals and hormones from decentralized facilities to groundwater and perflurochemicals from centralized wastewater systems to aquatic systems.