Chemical pollutants in water and wastewater and related Eco toxicity: advanced developing technologies for organic degradation

Abstract

Environmental issues nowadays include the presence of contaminants in waters that are increasing in numbers and classes of chemicals. The environmental and human health will always depend on the protection of the air, waters, and soil. The industrial activities are as important as agriculture but a more clean production is imperative. The subject of this chapter is to discuss the xenobiotics contaminants in water and wastewaters and their related toxicity. A second issue is to show some data related to new possible technologies, under development, and their potency for decomposition of organic contaminants. Acute toxicity results evidenced the importance of this tool for assessing the impacts of toxins to living organisms and here they were used for the evaluation of proposed technologies for wastewater improvement. Three treatment technology options were presented (advanced oxidative processes, AOPs; photolysis by UV radiation, also including the Photo-Fenton processes and Ultra-sound; a special biomidia used as an additive effort to enhance biomass in order to treat landifill leachate in a sewage mixture). The last technique and Integrated Fixed-Film Activated Sludge (IFAS) was assessed for also for toxicity removals. Daphnia similis water flea and Vibrio fischeri bacteria were the target organisms for the evaluation of these processes. Acute effects removal > 20% was achieved for fluoxetine irradiated at 5kGy. ATZ acute effects were efficiently removed after 60 min of exposure to UV radiation and the combined IFAS processes were the most effective process for toxicity removal.