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 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.

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...

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.

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States and provides critical resources to fish, wildlife and people. For more than a decade, recreational fish species have been plagued with skin lesions and intersex conditions (the presence of male and female sex characteristics in the same fish) that biologists attributed to exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs)...

A team of scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the University of Colorado measured seven neuroactive pharmaceutical compounds in treated wastewater and downstream receiving waters at 24 sites across Minnesota. The analysis of samples collected upstream and downstream of wastewater treatment plants indicated that wastewater treatment plants were the major source of these chemicals.

Waters produced as a byproduct of oil and gas development were found to yield high concentrations of disinfection byproducts (DBPs) when treated. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) sampled stream waters upstream and downstream of the outfall of Publicly Owned Wastewater Treatment Works (POTWs), POTWs that receive and treat waters produced by conventional and unconventional oil and gas development...

The USGS's National Reconnaissance of Pharmaceuticals in U.S. Streams is making an impact in the scientific and regulatory communities.

Discover Magazine has named the Toxic Substances Hydrology Program's "National Reconnaissance of Pharmaceuticals, Hormones, and Other Organic Wastewater Contaminants in Streams" as one of the 100 top science stories of 2002.