Occurrence of micropollutants in four major rivers in Korea

Simultaneous assessments of occurrence, ecological, human health, and organoleptic hazards for 77 VOCs in typical drinking water sources from 5 major river basins, China

“…This chemical has been reported to cause kidney damage in rats and humans (Green et al, 2003). The concentrations of the compound were comparable to those measured in Greece (Nikolaou et al, 2002), but higher than those in Korea (Cho et al, 2014). The comparison to data investigated by Liu and Zhou (2011) indicated that this contaminant had been increasing in water sources in China since 2006.…”

“…It was widely accepted that an ecological risk is suspected when the RQ is ! 1 (Cho et al, 2014), so the RQs calculated for fish that were >1 are shown in Table 3. Crotonaldehyde was the only one contaminant that the RQ of which consistently exceeded 1.…”

“…The risks of xylenes, nbutylbenzene, and benzaldehyde were found only once, occurring at site 20 in 2013, at site 17 in 2013, and at site 7 in 2013, respectively. Though high concentrations may induce adverse effects or represent an ecological risk, they are not directly related to risks to the ecosystem because the ecological risk of a pollutant is induced not only by its high concentration, but also by the toxicity of the pollutant and the sensitivity of the receptor (Cho et al, 2014). Table 2 Concentrations of total common VOCs, total carbonyl compounds, and total taste and odor compounds in 5 major river basins.…”

“…As the population and demand for safe drinking water increase, it is important to examine water quality and identify contaminants that occur in source water (Rowe et al, 2007), which are thought to be frequently exposed to large amounts of micropollutants originating from the discharge of anthropogenic activities and natural process (Cho et al, 2014). Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), one contaminant group of concern, could be originated from photochemical and microbial activities (Fink, 2007;Watson, 2004) and introduced to the aquatic environment by emission and combustion (Liu and Zhou, 2011).…”

Effect of temperature and photon absorption on the kinetics of micropollutant removal by solar photo-Fenton in raceway pond reactors

“…There is an increasing environmental concern on the removal of persistent organic pollutants in treated wastewaters, which remain in the WWTP effluents discharged to natural water bodies at very low concentrations (ng/L-lg/L) [1,2] but with accumulative effects on the flora and fauna in aquatic ecosystems [3][4][5][6]. Some countries have started to limit the emission of such pollutants, called micropollutants [1,7].…”