[Pharmwaste] short article: A Solution to Pharmaceutical Pollution? Costs, residuals

[Price, John L. "Jack"]

Rita: Thanks for the summary. 2 questions pop up that this particular research was not designed to address. I ask them rhetorically because they are difficult to answer and the related policy questions are thorny. As we move from bench scale processes to wastewater treatment facility scale, we will confront these questions.

1. What additional costs for treatment equipment and treatment time, " the process they've designed takes a bit longer than conventional treatment," will this treatment process entail? There are probably thousands of treatment facilities nationwide. Infrastructure maintenance and upgrades for all utility infrastructure is seriously underfunded as it is. There will be hard choices if we chose to increase treatment plant costs for additional treatment equipment/time at the expense of something else.
2. What is the fate and transport of the removed compounds when we dispose of or land apply the treatment plant residuals? These compounds may report back to the environment in higher concentrations or more harmful chemical forms.

Jack

John L. (Jack) Price
Environmental Manager
Waste Reduction MS 4555
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
2600 Blair Stone Road
Tallahassee, FL  32399-2400
Phone:850.245.8751
Fax: 850.245.8811
john.l.price at dep.state.fl.us
www.dep.state.fl.us/waste
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From: pharmwaste-bounces at lists.dep.state.fl.us [mailto:pharmwaste-bounces at lists.dep.state.fl.us] On Behalf Of Rita Wong
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2011 7:40 PM
To: pharmwaste at lists.dep.state.fl.us
Subject: [Pharmwaste] short article: A Solution to Pharmaceutical Pollution?

Hello,
Below is an article I recently wrote, and thought might be of interest to folks on this list. If you have any suggestions as to where it should be circulated, I'd be happy to hear from you.
Kind regards,
Rita Wong

****
A Solution to Pharmaceutical Pollution?

Today, pollution is shifting so that it is not merely something out there (smog, tons of plastic suspended in the ocean) but also something inside each and every one of us, spread by our shared experience of air, water, and food. The term "body burden" refers to the hundreds of chemicals now found in the average citizen around the world, chemicals that did not exist in our bodies before World War II.
Some of these chemicals have been shown to cause organ damage as well as cancer in various studies. There is no escape from pollution, but there may be possible solutions if we pay attention.

Last year, four engineering students at Ryerson University won an award for their final year project--designing a process to remove residual pharmaceuticals from wastewater. As someone concerned about residual drugs in our sewage, I was very excited to learn of their work. So, I tracked down Reuben Fernandes, Kirill Cheiko, Charles Gilmour and Pawel Kita, and asked them a few questions about their project.

They've all graduated. Fernandes will study public policy next year, and Gilmour has gone on to graduate studies, where he is investigating mutagens that form in wastewater. Cheiko is working for a consulting engineering company designing water treatment systems for industrial and municipal sectors, while Kita is working at an automotive company.
All of them want a chance to build a laboratory prototype to test their design, and they recently shared their work at the Northeast Water Science Forum in Portland, Maine, this April.

The three-stage process they developed uses commercially available technologies--such  as advanced screening, a Canadian hollow-fiber membrane system, and a UV light/hydrogen peroxide reactor--but what is unique is that this particular combination removes traces of pharmaceuticals. Conventional wastewater treatment plants were not designed to handle everything from antibiotics to cancer drugs, pain relievers, and endocrine disruptors.

They chose seven representative compounds from five pharmaceutical/EDC families that are the most toxic and/or concentrated in wastewater, and methodically set out to remove them. Given the hundreds, possibly
thousands of different drugs in the water, this is no mean challenge.
Cheiko would like their system to target hospital wastewater, where such drugs are particularly concentrated. Having seen my own hospitalized family members ingest strong anti-cancer drugs that should not even be touched, and then flush their toxic wastes into municipal waters, I appreciate their focus on hospitals.

Gilmour explains, "With enough time or energy, organic compounds (which these drugs are) will keep breaking down until they reach the base level of becoming water and carbon dioxide, which is ideally the goal."  While the process they've designed takes a bit longer than conventional treatment, it can remove more than 90% of pharmaceuticals and endocrine disruptors.

I asked them if they'd had any surprises in doing their team project.
Cheiko says, "I was surprised that the effects of the residual pharmaceuticals on wildlife are pretty well known, yet little is being done to remediate the situation."  Deformed, intersex fish affected by this pollution have been found from the Potomac watershed (Washington DC, 2003) to Puget Sound (Seattle) to Lake Mead (Las Vegas), as well as high rates of dead fish in some cases.

Given these effects, it's logical to ask what's in store for humans too.  Gilmour argues persuasively for a precautionary principle--it being more cost-effective to reduce these chemicals as quickly as possible, rather than to wait to find out the costs to our health and environment. This happened with ozone and the Montreal Protocol in 1989, which is estimated to have saved billions of dollars in economic and environmental disruption. In light of all the malformed fish, it is also surprising that there doesn't seem to be more urgency among our leaders to address this very real problem.

Some of these drugs, such as endocrine disruptors, can have effects at very low concentrations. What's more, the cumulative effect of all these chemicals mixing and interacting remains anyone's guess.  "This is a serious problem, one that will only get worse in the foreseeable future if action is not taken soon," says Fernandes.  Perhaps more municipalities should be talking to these guys, who are working on real solutions.  While preventing these chemicals from entering the wastewater is one real step more people can take, I don't see our meds disappearing from hospitals anytime soon, so this project deserves more public support.

For more information about their project, contact Reuben Fernandes at reuben.fernandes at gmail.com
  or Charles Gilmour at crgilmour at gmail.com