Assessment of the Occurrence of Few Select Emerging Contaminants in Surface Waters Municipal Wastewaters Studies for Their Removal

Abstract

newline vii newlineAbstract newline Water is one of the most important ingredients responsible for life on earth; therefore, it is newlinenormally quoted as and#8213;Water is Lifeand#8214;. Out of many different forms of water, only liquid form newlinepresent in the surface sources and ground water sources are majorly used by living organism for newlinetheir routine activities. However, surface and groundwater sources are being largely getting newlinecontaminated due to the discharge of partially treated and untreated sewage and industrial newlinewastewaters from different sources. There are many water pollution monitoring agencies (e.g. newlineCPCB, SPCB etc.), which monitor only specific pollutants having proper regulatory standards. newlineNevertheless, there are new category of pollutants that have emerged due to increased newlineindustrialization, urbanization and higher standards of living, called and#8213;emerging contaminantsand#8214;. In newlineIndia so far, there are no regulatory standards for these new emerging contaminants and also newlinethese are not regularly monitored for their presence in water environments by any of the above newlineregulatory agencies. newlineEmerging Contaminants (EC s) encompasses a broad range of chemical compounds newlinewhich are found to be present at trace level in the environments. These emerging contaminants newlineenter in to the water environments through different paths such as discharge of inadequately newlinetreated sewage and industrial wastewater, leaching of pollutants from wastewater and newlineagricultural runoffs etc. Effluent treatment plants (ETPs) and Sewage treatment plants (STPs) are newlinenot capable of removing emerging contaminants as these are not specifically designed to remove newlinetoxic and hazardous emerging contaminants. These contaminants interfere with the operations of newlineETPs and STPs and often hit biological treatment processes badly because of the presence of newlinetoxic and hazardous contaminants. They eliminate through the conventional wastewater newlineviii newlinetreatment processes and enter in to the water receiving bodies. Some of these emerging newlinecontaminants have endocrine adisrupting poten