The ever-increasing number of findings of organic substances (micropollutants) in surface water needs targeted prioritisation and selection of those substances that are relevant to water supply and potentially problematic. This was the aim of this research project.
The ever-increasing number of findings of organic substances in groundwater and surface water needs targeted prioritisation and selection of those substances that are relevant to water supply and potentially problematic. In the presented research project, intrinsic substance properties, water-supply-specific criteria and removability in natural and technical systems were considered, along with the contamination sources in water and preferred application/use.
The developed methodology is a two-stage process: The first step is to screen modelled physicochemical data and toxicological derivations. This equates to a worst-case scenario in which the only known information on the potential raw water contamination is the chemical identity (i.e. the structure) of the compound. This approach is chosen based on the fact that the high rate of substance development and the analytical evidence of “new” substances in drinking water resources means that the official assessment of these substances in terms of relevance to drinking water cannot compete with the speed of its detection and the situation in terms of experimental data is often poor. For those substances identified as problematic, which cannot be addressed using the selected risk management measures (i.e. activated carbon treatment and ozonation), once screening – if available – is complete, the list of substances is refined using experimental data on their environmental fate. This also takes into account information on application quantities and substance contamination scenarios. The detailed results can be found in the final report.
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