Municipal and Industrial Wastewaters

The USGS Environmental Health Program seeks to understand how environmental factors, especially contaminants and pathogens, influence human health and ecosystems. It focuses on studying the distribution and effects of toxic substances, environmental stressors, and their pathways. The program prioritizes collaboration with State, Federal and local governments; Tribes; non-government organizations...

The Energy Resources Life Cycle Integrated Science Team focuses on the potential for environmental contaminant exposures that might originate from energy resource activities including extraction, production, transportation, storage, waste management, and restoration. Perceived health risks to humans and other organisms will be distinguished from actual risks, if any. If actual risks are identified...

The team studies toxicants and pathogens in water resources from their sources, through watersheds, aquifers, and infrastructure to human and wildlife exposures. That information is used to develop decision tools that protect human and wildlife health.

Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program project ER-2533 In chlorinated-solvent-contaminated fractured-sedimentary-rock aquifers, low-permeability (low-K) strata typically act as long-term or secondary sources of contamination to mobile groundwater in the high-permeability fractures. The fate of dissolved trichloroethene (TCE) in the low-K matrix is controlled by abiotic...

A National-scale approach is used to examine and analyze per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) prevalence and magnitude in watersheds and aquifers. As an initial step to fill known science gaps in the understanding of human and wildlife exposure, the team will provide a snapshot of PFAS in drinking water paired with bioaccumulation in fish and wildlife near known or suspected sources of...

Refinement of the existing national-scale “de facto reuse incidence in our nation’s consumable supply” (DRINCS) model, complemented by field measurements, provides a screening tool to understand human and wildlife exposure to toxicants and pathogens associated with the incidental reuse of treated wastewater in the Shenandoah River watershed. The model results can be accessed in a companion web...

A multiagency reconnaissance study of chemicals in urban stormwater, sampled from pipes or ditches during 50 runoff events at 21 sites in 17 states across the United States, demonstrated that stormwater runoff contains complex mixtures of chemicals including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals that are indicative of multiple sources in the watershed.

Science from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and other entities has shown that a mixture of natural and synthetic estrogens and other similar chemicals are discharged from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) to streams and rivers.

Our specialized teams of hydrologists, chemists, biologists, and geologists worked together in the New River Gorge National River watershed to answer this question. Wastewater generated in association with oil and gas operations at this site is managed by injection in deep wells designed to safely dispose and contain contaminants in deep geologic formations. Contaminants associated with oil and...

Scientists explored the suitability of the DeFacto Reuse in our Nation's Consumable Supply (DRINCS) model to estimate the likelihood of contaminants from upstream wastewater discharges to enter drinking water facility intakes.

Laboratory study shows that both uptake and elimination of selected pharmaceuticals within bluegill tissues is rapid indicating that persistence in bluegills in the environment is likely to be low except in those fish that reside downstream from a consistent, substantial, contaminant source.

Commonly used chemicals (including fragrances, detergents, fire retardants, plasticizers, and antibacterials) transferred to wastewater treatment plants were detected in municipal wastewater biosolids applied to agricultural field plots and subsequently detected in the runoff transported from the plots during precipitation events.