DEVELOPING WATER UTILITY TREATMENT TECHNOLOGIES

For countless centuries, humans, and pre-humans, have drunk and used untreated water from rivers, lakes, springs and other raw sources. As a result, they often fell victim to water borne illnesses such as typhoid and cholera. Finally, at the start of the 20th Century in the United States, water utilities began to employ a disinfection treatment technology called chlorination.

Subsequently, because of chlorination, drinking water generally was perceived as safe. However, with the advent of more extensive regulation of drinking water by states and ultimately by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, new technologies were developed as alternative disinfection protocols and also to control other contaminants. These technologies, many of which today are employed either instead of chlorination or in addition to it, include ultraviolet light, ozone, membranes, reverse osmosis and ion exchange.

A recent published article advises that notwithstanding these existing technologies, testing of new treatment protocols continues today.* Examples discussed in the article include:

* application of ferrate, an ion of iron. It can work as a disinfectant and can breakdown carbon chemical contaminants for easier filtration.

* using electrochemical membranes which filter and also break down contaminants through chemical reactions.

* breaking down certain industrial chemicals called PFAS using ultraviolet light and sulfite.

The ongoing advances in treatment technology research is both impressive and comforting, when one reflects on a comparison with water treatment prior to 1900.

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* Hamers, "Drinkability", Science News,
November 24, 2018, p.18

© Daniel J. Kucera 2018