Heads up: U.S. researchers found all sorts of united-states-tributaries-to-the-great-lakes/”>relevant-contaminants-of-emerging-concern/”>contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) across the country. Think pharmaceuticals, stuff from personal care products, and chemicals that mess with hormones. They showed up in both raw water and the water that’s already been treated. While the amounts were usually small, finding them everywhere tells us one thing: we really need advanced water purification like reverse osmosis and activated carbon filtration.

\\n\\nGlassmeyer, S.T., et al., Science of The Total Environment, 581-582:909-922, March 2017\\n\\nWhen we’re checking out chemicals or tiny bugs in our water, trying to figure out if they’re a problem or if we need to regulate them, the first step is always the same. Are they there? And are they in amounts that could hurt people or the environment? To answer that, researchers analyzed water samples from 29 drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs). This was a two-phase study to see if certain chemicals and microbes, many of them “contaminants of emerging concern,” were showing up. In Phase I, they looked at 84 chemicals in 9 DWTPs. They found 27 of them at least once in the raw water and 21 in the treated water. Then came Phase II, a much bigger look. They measured 247 different chemicals and microbes in 25 DWTPs. They detected 148 of them in raw water and 121 in treated drinking water. How often they found something often depended on what kind of contaminant it was. For example, pharmaceuticals and signs of human waste didn’t show up much and were easier to get rid of during treatment. But PFAS chemicals and other inorganic stuff were found more often and were generally harder to treat. All this data will help us better understand unregulated contaminants in surface water, groundwater, and our drinking water.\\n\\nSource: Water Feed