Earthrehab’s Weblog

Most of our presently used water and sewage treatment technologies are more than a hundred years old and certainly have not kept up with all the newly introduced chemical compounds, among them PPCPs (pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products).

Most regulations, especially the testing requirements have not changed much, as is obvious in our water pollution regulations, which now for half a decade have been based on a faulty applied pollution test.

The goal of the Clan Water Act was the elimination of all water pollution by 1985, but when EPA implemented the CWA, it set certain treatment standards and used an essential test incorrectly. Since sewage treatment plants were violating their discharge permits, while in fact treating sewage better than was required by the permit, EPA in 1984 acknowledged the problems with this test, but in stead of correcting the test (to make it finally possible to evaluate the real performance of sewage treatment plants and to determine their effluent waste loadings on receiving water bodies), EPA allowed an alternative test and officially ignored all the water pollution caused by nitrogenous (urine and protein) waste and lowered the goal of the CWA from 100% treatment to a measly 35% treatment, without even informing Congress.

This, while nitrogenous waste, like fecal waste, exerts and oxygen demand, but also in all its forms is a nutrient (fertilizer) for algae and aquatic plants, now even by EPA recognized as the largest water pollution problem in our open waters, causing eutrophication and eventually dead zones, noticeable worldwide in large water bodies, but especially in the Gulf of Mexico.

So while we still use our open waters as giant urinals, nobody seems to care and nobody can he held accountable. Apparently this is too technical an issue to get involved.
So, as along as we still use our open water as urinals, we will have to deal with all those new chemical compounds that get into sewage and are not treated in our sewage treatment facilities, enter our open waters and show up in our drinking water, since that type of drinking water treatment again is only concerned with certain tests, which do not address these PPCP’s (Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products).

If you like to learn more visit http://www.petermaier.net and look in the technical PDF section and read the description of the BOD (Biochemical Oxidation Demand) test. How it should be applied and what the consequences are if you apply the test as it sadly is still applied worldwide.