Emerging Contaminants in urban stormwater: challenges and perspectives for sustainable water use

Emerging contaminants (ECs) are chemical compounds commonly present in water. It is only recently that this family of compounds is being recognized as significant water pollutants (Czech and Ribinowska, 2013). ECs include a wide variety of chemicals such as pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs), pesticides, hydrocarbons and hormones, among others, that once released into the environment exert adverse impacts on the human and wildlife endocrine system (Rosen et al., 2010). As result, many of them are now included within the Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) group. Natural attenuation and conventional treatment processes are not capable of removing these micro-pollutants detected in wastewater influent and effluent and surface and drinking water (Bustos et al., 2015; Rosen et al., 2010).