A GAME-CHANGER IN EVALUATING RISK
Down-the-Drain Products and iSTREEM®
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While ecological risk assessment has focused on priority contaminants such as pesticides for decades, scientists and regulators around the world have had an increasing focus on the environmental impact of everyday chemicals found in home and personal care products and pharmaceuticals. These materials, along with a few others used indoors, constitute down-the-drain products.constitute down-the-drain products. |
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Most of us probably don’t put much thought into our own, continuous contributions to down-the-drain materials. As a quick exercise, I made a list of my down-the-drain contributions just from this morning. First, hygiene products: toothpaste, mouthwash, shampoo, soap, conditioner, body lotion, deodorant, some plethora of skincare products, makeup, and hair products…then my daily vitamins and medication. I had a few extra minutes for chores this morning, so I needed to add dish soap, laundry detergent, and fabric softener. But wait, there’s more! Clothing in the washing machine can also contribute to down-the-drain exposure through the breakdown of synthetic fibers into nanoparticles and microplastics…so I need to add that to my list. That’s a pretty long list for an hour morning routine and it drives home an important point: most of what we use in our homes ends up going down-the-drain where, for those of us in cities, it is eventually transported to a municipal wastewater treatment plant (WWTP).
After treatment, the effluent from WWTPs feeds into surface water bodies. Thankfully, we have tools like iSTREEM® to help us model the fate of these down-the-drain materials to ensure safety in our surface and drinking water. iSTREEM® is a publicly-available, web-based, spatially explicit model that estimates the concentration of a chemical that goes down-the-drain and the residual levels that subsequently enter the aquatic environment. Providing predicted environmental concentrations in effluent, receiving waters, and drinking water intakes, iSTREEM® is a critical tool beyond screening-level and used in higher-tier risk assessment of down-the-drain products.
iSTREEM® was originally developed decades ago by Procter & Gamble. Over the past 10 years, through a collaboration with the American Cleaning Institute, and Waterborne has been at the helm of the model’s development, testing, expansion, and outreach. In fact, iSTREEM® was named as one of the 20 most innovative and influential tools in... >>Read the full article
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Applying Our Environmental Modeling Tools In the Fight Against COVID-19 |
There is no doubt that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all of us, to varying degrees, either directly or indirectly. While 2020 will live on in history as a year of epidemiological and economic devastation, a silver lining can be found in how the pandemic has shaped the course of scientific research: insights and collaboration within the scientific community progressed on a global scale at a pace we have never quite seen before. It did not take long for us to realize that our tools and expertise in environmental modeling could play a role in the arms race between the SARS-CoV-2 virus and scientific research.
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Waterborne Investigates Environmental Stressors to Coral in the Florida Keys |
One of the most diverse ecosystems in the world are the coral reefs. Corals can grow in both shallow and deep waters but corals that build reefs are generally found in shallow subtropical and tropical waters. Known as the “big cities in the sea”, coral reefs are home to thousands of species. Since these ecosystems are pertinent to the survival of several thousand species, the decline of corals is a global concern. Recently, Waterborne scientists and engineers, in collaboration with the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, investigated specific stressor impact on the widespread decline of coral in the Florida Reef Tract.
Coral reefs are threatened by multiple stressors, most notably by the global sea temperature change and acidification due to the rise in atmospheric CO2 levels. Stony Coral Tissue Loss Diseases (SCTLD) are of particular concern for coral health...
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Gearing Up for Federal Action on PFAS |
A hot-button topic among scientific researchers and regulators is per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Once considered a miracle of modern chemistry, PFAS can be found in food packaging, commercial household products (including stain- and water-repellent fabrics, nonstick products, polishes, waxes, paints, cleaning products and fire-fighting foams), and industrial equipment. PFAS are now widely referred to as ‘forever chemicals’ since they are extremely persistent in the environment and are capable of accumulation over time. The concern for adverse ecological and human health effects has strengthened the focus on PFAS.
The most comprehensively studied PFAS chemicals are perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), which have been voluntarily phased out by industry but are still persistent in the environment from decades of widespread use. GenX chemicals and perfluorobutane sulfonic acid (PFBS) have become the primary... >>Read the rest of the article
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Modern Wastewater Treatment: the Marvel of Civil Engineering We Take for Granted? |
“But…where does it go?” It’s a question we might hear from a toddler while potty training or seeing something rinsed down the drain. We rarely think about it in our daily lives, yet wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) remain a crucial part of the modern human impact cycle, with a direct impact on ecological and human health, as well as climate change. At the start and end of our plumbing system, WWTPs represent a marvel of civil engineering firmly set to protect harmful impacts of the water to humans and ecology, as well as the harmful impacts of humans... >>Read the rest of the article
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Filling a Global Data Need for Surface Runoff and River Flow Data |
The availability The availability of detailed surface runoff and river flow data across large geographic areas is crucial for diverse applications. Only a few countries have such data at a high resolution (HR). Paucity of detailed input spatial data and challenges with intense processing were the limiting factors in developing HR surface runoff and river flow datasets over large spatial scales. USDA’s well-established Curve Number (CN) method was applied as a spatially distributed hydrologic modeling approach to estimate surface runoff. >>Read the rest of the article
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Waterborne Environmental is a renowned consulting firm that has provided innovative solutions to the world’s most complex environmental problems since 1993. Our experienced, unbiased scientists and engineers work across industries to evaluate environmental, ecological, and human risks. Our work spans across industry and regulatory agencies to support the balance in the needs of a growing population with the environmental impact on our valuable natural resources.
Our The Current Newsletter is published monthly. Visit us online to find more articles, videos, and information about our work. Click here to contact us.
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