There is a need to monitor emerging contaminants – such as pharmaceutically active and/or endocrine-disrupting compounds – through conventional drinking water treatment processes. This review suggests a Quantitative Structure Activity Relationship-like model to select indicator emerging compounds in finished drinking water.
Recent studies have demonstrated the presence of trace-level pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs) and endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) in a number of finished drinking waters.
However, there is currently sparse knowledge on the potential effects on human health associated with chronic exposure to trace levels of these emerging contaminants through routes such as drinking water.
Here French researchers suggest that the most appropriate criterion is a treatment criterion to prioritise emerging contaminants to be monitored during drinking water preparation.
Hence, only the few emerging contaminants showing the lowest removals towards a given drinking water treatment (DWT) process would serve as indicators of the overall efficiency of this process, and would be relevant for monitoring drinking water quality.
In addition, models should be developed to estimate the removal of emerging contaminants in DWT processes, thereby overcoming the practical difficulties of experimentally assessing each compound.
Therefore, the present review has two objectives. First, to provide an overview of recent scientific surveys on the occurrence of PhACs and EDCs in finished drinking waters.
Secondly, it proposes the potential of Quantitative-Structure-Activity-Relationship-(QSAR)-like models to rank emerging contaminants found in environmental waters, including parent compounds, metabolites and transformation products.
This allows selection of the most relevant compounds to be considered as indicators for monitoring purposes in DWT systems.
Water Research, Volume 46, Issue 19, 1 December 2012, Pages 6196–6209.
