The removal of pharma residues from waste treatment process waters or more generally from wastewaters from hospitals and nursing homes, from intensive agricultural facilities and perhaps even from community wastewater outflows is an emerging but extremely important development.
This has become somewhat contentious in the clinical waste sector where faux regulatory concerns about possible pharma residues in treatment outflows have been used to bully permitting applicants to produce research information for the regulator without the slightest pretense to scientific integrity of appropriate funding. However, pharmaceutical residues in wastewater are cause for considerable concern.
Berson (http://www.bersonuv.com/) is a UV disinfection specialist based in the Netherlands, with installations worldwide. The company manufactures UV disinfection systems for municipal drinking water, wastewater and reuse applications. It’s medium pressure UV systems are being used in a trial in the Netherlands to treat hospital wastewater prior to discharge. In the trial, UV is applied in combination with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) to generate OH– radicals in a so-called “Advanced Oxidation Process” (AOP). The very reactive OH- radicals attack the pharmaceutical residues in the wastewater, breaking them down into H2O, CO2 and harmless metabolites.
Like all hospitals, the wastewater from the Isala Hospital in Zwolle, the Netherlands, contains elevated levels of X-ray contrast compounds and various other pharmaceutical residues.
Prior to UV/ H2O2 treatment the complete wastewater stream is pre-treated in a membrane bioreactor (MBR). The wastewater then passes through a Berson InLine medium pressure UV system, into which specific amounts of H2O2 are injected. The treated wastewater is then discharged as treated sewage into the municipal sewage system.
Even though it is unclear what effects these residues have on the water habitat, studies have shown that there is a link between elevated levels of substances such as the hormone ethinylestradiol, which is contained in contraceptive pills, and the reproductive rate of fish. The removal of these and other potentially harmful compounds is therefore a priority.
This is the first full-scale trial for the treatment of hospital wastewater in Europe and is part of the Europe-wide PILLS project, which is investigating which treatment methods are best suited to eliminate pharmaceutical residues from hospital wastewater. At present wastewater plants are not able to remove pharmaceutical residues from their wastewater.
Thereby hangs the real problem wastewater plants are not able to remove pharmaceutical residues from their wastewater. But we persist with wastewater treatment plant that hasn’t moved forward since its design and construction by the Victorians. When it rains, hundreds of thousands of gallons of untreated sewage flows directly to our rivers or into the sea. At the cost of substantially increased water bills, much of the leaking pipework has been replaced. What we need now is for the water companies to put their hands in their pocket and support the delevlopment of improved wastewater treatment techniques, and then invest in their introduction.
Developments of local treatment processes are vitally important. However, it is not reasonable to expect that those discharging wastewater into the sewerage systems will discharge only clean or pre-treated water while ignoring the more diffuse but possibly far more significant discharges from domestic properties and elsewhere. This is a difficult issue and one that must receive considerably greater attention as the cumulative effect of continuous discharges and inadequate wastewater treatments continues to grow. The water industries must now play their part and change their ostrich-like stance that blames everyone else while pretending that the the solution lies anywhere other than in their own back yard.