Emerging pollutants (EPs) are the contaminants of concern in water systems. These are mainly due to anthropogenic activities and are not always removed during water treatment, eventually affecting the quality of water supply systems (WSSs). These pollutants vary from organic pollutants such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and flame retardants to inorganic pollutants like heavy metals or illicit drugs. Currently, there is a lack of adequate research on the chronic health effects of these pollutants. In addition, climate change plays a role in immobilizing these pollutants. Consequently, considering the increasing effects visible in many countries, the rising levels of contaminants have strained the effectiveness of water treatment facilities. As water supply is an essential service to communities, it is necessary to ensure the reliability against risks of EPs. Therefore, it is important to protect the health and safety of consumers. Climate change has brought threats to water infrastructures, like many others. This review examined the effect of climate change on EPs in water supplies by providing a detailed review of the contaminants, evaluating their potential toxicity, and determining the appropriate water treatment technologies. The role of the WSS in EP immobilization was examined in addition to the potential effect of climate change. This review of different critical and relevant literature aids with the identification of current research gaps. Based on the identified gaps, a research framework was developed for the future investigation of EPs.

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Wastewater reuse is essential for sustainable water management. However, it requires tertiary treatment within the plant to ensure suitable water quality. This project aims to investigate the comparative performance of conventional tertiary treatment (sand filtration) against membrane filtration technology to demonstrate the viability of membrane treatment for wastewater reuse. Sand filtration along with two membrane filtrations, Nano Filtration (NF) and Reverse Osmosis (RO), were tested for their efficiency in removing the target pollutants: chromium, phosphate, and UV-254 from secondary effluent. Standard medium-sized laboratory setups were used. Synthetic secondary effluent was used for comparison among the different treatment processes. The synthetic effluent was compared to the real wastewater to demonstrate the reliability of using synthetic effluent. Evaluation of the role of time and pressure on the treatment efficiency was also examined. Based on the experimental results, RO had the highest removal efficiency for all pollutants with more than 90% removal. The experimental results also showed that synthetic wastewater was reliable in representing the treatability of real wastewater. Time did not seem to have an impact on the quality of filtration. Moreover, as pressure increased there was a slight increase in the efficiency. This trend was observed in all pollutants except UV-254. ANOVA showed different results of the effect of pressure on the removal efficiency in both RO and NF as well as time in NF.