Emerging organic contaminants in global community drinking water sources and supply: A review of occurrence, processes and remediation

Human-sourced organic compounds like pesticides, pharmaceuticals, surfactants, personal care products, food, and industrial additives are used daily, across multiple sectors, globally. These compounds when found in the environment in undesirable or detrimental concentrations, are grouped and termed as emerging organic contaminants (EOCs). Groundwater are typically major sources of the community drinking water plants. EOCs can get introduced in the community drinking water sources via numerous point and non-point sources such as agricultural runoff, artificial recharge, or effluents from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Several EOCs have been recently reported from community drinking water sources across the world. EOCs like carbamazepine, atrazine, caffeine, and metolachlor are frequently detected contaminants in drinking water sources. These EOCs are known to pose a severe risk to human health to these contaminated water ingesting communities. Conventional drinking water treatment plants fail to remove EOCs from the sources. These EOCs, along with other organics, lead to the formation of carcinogenic disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in community drinking water treatment plants. Researchers have explored various remedial measures ranging from in-situ treatments to ex-situ treatments. Researchers are presently exploring various emerging remedial measures like membrane separation or nanotechnology. All the treatment measures have their specific advantages and disadvantages. However, most of the remedial measures are investigated on a lab-scale. This fact highlights the need for proper field-scale experiments before being successfully used in community treatment plants to provide clean water to the masses to achieve sustainable development goal (SDG) 6.

Automated summary

Human-sourced organic compounds, especially emerging organic contaminants, pose a significant threat to community drinking water sources worldwide. Conventional treatment plants are unable to effectively remove these contaminants, leading to the formation of carcinogenic disinfection byproducts. Researchers are actively exploring solutions, including membrane separation and nanotechnology.