News Share

World ‘facing flood of new toxins’ Date: 14 September 2015 Category: News, Press releases,2015

The world needs to prepare for a flood of potentially dangerous new pollutants, an international expert in environmental chemistry has warned.

Dr Susan Richardson of the University of South Carolina will tell the CleanUp 2015 Conference in Melbourne tomorrow that new contaminants, some of which are just as – or more – toxic than ‘traditional’ pollutants like heavy metals, are already finding their way into the world’s rivers, lakes, groundwater and drinking water.

The new toxins arise from sources such as artificial sweeteners, nanomaterials, perfumes, medical drugs, hormones, sunscreens, flame retardants, non-stick coatings, pesticide breakdown products, hospital wastes, and the by-products of detergents, disinfectants and swimming pool cleansers.

Left undetected and untreated, they can be hazardous to humans, with some already linked to conditions such as cancer, obesity, lower intelligence and infertility, Dr Richardson says.

“The world is no longer dealing with the ‘same old, same old’ contaminants,” she explains. “The list of new ones keeps growing, with ionic liquids and prions being among the most recent.”

Ionic liquids are used as “green chemistry” to replace traditional solvents in cleaning products, but their effects are still largely unknown.

Prions – molecules that are highly resistant to disinfection – are known to cause ‘mad cow disease’, chronic wasting disease in deer and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease as well as kuru in humans.

“Algal toxins are also an increasing concern – an algal bloom in Ohio, US, last year shut down the drinking water system for the whole city. Such blooms are expected to increase as more nitrogen makes its way into our wastewater and rivers,” she says.

Dr Richardson explains that many of the new contaminants arise from common household products like cleansers and furnishings, personal care products, food packaging, and the medical as well as recreational drugs we excrete from our bodies.

“These products get washed off in the shower or flushed down the toilet and travel to wastewater plants. Some of them become toxic once they react with the chlorine or chloramine with which the water is treated,” she says.

“It’s bad news because our wastewater treatments, which are designed to remove ‘traditional’ waste, cannot treat these toxins efficiently. There is no one-size-fits-all way to clean up all of them.”

One example is the failure to remove NMDA, a carcinogenic disinfection by-product. “Reverse osmosis – the same process that removes salt from water – was used to treat NMDA, but the compound was so small that it passed through the filter. As a result, a half or less of the NMDA is removed.”

Currently, Dr Richardson and her team are researching better ways to detect these contaminants. “As some of them are very difficult to treat, it may be more effective to remove the ‘precursor’ molecules before they can react with chlorine or chloramine in wastewater ponds and turn toxic.

“This means that we need to ‘catch’ them sooner.

“Meantime, the world needs to become much more aware of these emerging contaminants and actively look for them in our waters. While we may not know the ill effects of some of them, it may be too late to stop those effects once they are unleashed.”

Dr Susan Richardson’s presentation “Emerging environmental contaminants and current issues” is on Tuesday 15 September at 8.30am in Crown Conference Centre Meeting Room 12.

CleanUp 2015, the 6th International Contaminated Site Remediation Conference, is being held at the Crown Conference Centre, Melbourne, from September 13-16, 2015.

Media are welcome to attend and interview participants. Please contact Adam Barclay (details below) to arrange a media pass.

More information:

Dr Susan Richardson, University of South Carolina, ph +1 706 461 0649

Prof. Ravi Naidu, Managing Director, CRC CARE, +61 407 720 257

Adam Barclay, Communication Manager, CRC CARE, +61 429 779 228 or adam.barclay@crccare.com

Julian Cribb, CRC CARE, +61 418 639 245