Sewer systems are large-scale systems that collect and transport stormwater and sanitary sewage out of urban areas. Sewer systems are mainly operated using pumping stations and pollutants are removed from sewage by treatment plants before water is released into the environment. When a sewer overflow occurs, e.g., caused by a strong rainfall, sewage is discharged directly into the environment wi...

A passive sampler (the polar organic chemical integrative sampler; POCIS) was assessed for its ability to sample natural estrogens (17β-estradiol, E2; estrone, E1 and estriol, E3) and the synthetic estrogen (17α-ethynylestradiol, EE2) in the outlet of a sewage treatment works over several weeks. The performance of the POCIS was investigated and optimised in the laboratory before field deploymen...

This is the first report of the detection of two new anti-influenza drugs, peramivir (PER) and laninamivir (LAN), in Japanese sewage effluent and river waters. Over about 1 year from October 2013 to July 2014, including the influenza prevalence season in January and February 2014, we monitored for five anti-influenza drugs-oseltamivir (OS), oseltamivir carboxylate (OC), zanamivir (ZAN), PER, an...

The inactivation of naturally occurring bacterial indicators and bacteriophages by thermal treatment of a dewatered sludge and raw sewage was studied. The sludge was heated at 80 degrees C, and the sewage was heated at 60 degrees C. In both cases phages were significantly more resistant to thermal inactivation than bacterial indicators, with the exception of spores of sulfite-reducing clostridi...

BACKGROUND Sewage treatment plants are considered to be the hotspots for antibiotic resistance transfer among bacterial species. Many fecal bacteria including Enterococci circulate and are exposed to antibiotic residues in this environment. Being as one of the most common cause of nosocomial infections, special concerns have risen worldwide about the rate and characteristics of Enterococci (esp...

Nowadays the field of centralized control is linked to major production processes or industrial applications, where the flow of information allows optimizing the total production process. In the area of small to medium enterprises (SMEs) (Wang & Kai-Yi, 2009), however it is still underdeveloped (Liao, 2009). Perhaps the reason is not the lack of capacity for the design or the cost of the techno...

A simple and rapid method is presented for the trace-level analysis of 10 polar pharmaceutical residues in various types of water samples from the aquatic environment. Using this method, the pharmaceuticals and several drug metabolites can be analyzed in drinking and surface waters and in wastewater (treated and untreated sewage) at concentrations down to 0.01 microg/L. Samples are prepared by ...

To simultaneously quantify and profile the complex mixture of short-, median-, and long-chain CPs (SCCPs, MCCPs, and LCCPs) in Australian sewage sludge, we applied and further validated a recently developed novel instrumental technique, using quadrupole time-of-flight high resolution mass spectrometry running in the negative atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mode (APCI-qTOF-HRMS). Withou...

During incineration of wastes in waste incineration plants, polluted flue gases are generated which have to be subjected to flue gas purification. Although the legal requirements are nearly unambiguous, the question of whether wet flue gas purification is to be performed in a sewage-free or sewage-generating manner is discussed controversially by experts in the Federal Republic of Germany. As a...