Treating wastewater with ozone could convert pharmaceuticals into toxic compounds
Wednesday, February 5, 2020 - 09:44
in Health & Medicine
With water scarcity intensifying, wastewater treatment and reuse are gaining popularity. But some methods for killing microbes in wastewater create disinfection byproducts (DBPs) that could be harmful to human health. Now researchers have found that ozone treatment and subsequent chlorination can convert trace amounts of some pharmaceuticals in wastewater into DBPs called halonitromethanes. They report their results in Environmental Science & Technology.