The US Environmental Protection Agency has proposed the use of quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) as a rapid alternative analytical method for monitoring recreational water quality at beaches. For qPCR to be considered for other Clean Water Act purposes, such as inclusion in discharge permits and use in Total Maximum Daily Load calculations, it is necessary to understand how qPCR det...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Water shortage problems have led to find either new water resources or improve wastewater treatment technologies in order to reuse. Due to less performance of previous units in microbial removal, disinfection has become a necessary step in wastewater treatment plants. In the present study performance of hydrogen peroxide (HP) and modified Fenton's reagent (HP + Cu(++))...

Treatment in a wastewater stabilization pond (WSP) relies on natural purification processes, which can be sensitive to both location and climate. This study investigated the effects of three environmental factors, pH, dissolved oxygen (DO) and temperature, on disinfection efficiency in a WSP system consisting of three facultative cells, and operated in a temperate climate region, in Eastern Ont...

Passive wastewater treatment systems are commonly applied in northern Canadian communities. Pathogen removal in these systems, which relies on natural purification, can be greatly affected by Arctic environmental conditions. In 2012, new Wastewater Systems Effluent Regulations (WSER) were implemented in Canada, but not in the far North due to the number of northern communities with limited wast...

New and improved methods are needed to disinfect pathogens in treated wastewater, especially highly resistant ones like Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts. In addition, new and improved methods are needed to detect pathogens and indicators for them in wastewater in order to monitor the efficacy of disinfection and other waste water treatment processes. Spores of the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium ...

Ultraviolet light (UV) is a recognized disinfection alternative to chlorine and ozone in many applications from drinking water to wastewater treatment. UV provides effective disinfection without production of problematic disinfection byproducts. Information on the mechanism and application of UV for drinking water disinfection is presented. Advantages and disadvantages of the technique are disc...

Wood fly ash is an industrial by-product of the combustion of different wood materials and is mostly disposed of as waste on landfills. In our preliminary experiments, wood ash exhibited antibacterial activity against urban wastewater bacteria and we focused on wood fly ash as a potential substrate for wastewater disinfection. The addition of ash at a concentration of 10 g L⁻¹ (1%) caused an in...

A new sand filtration water disinfection technology is developed which relies on the antimicrobial properties of hydrophobic polycations (N-hexylated polyethylenimine) covalently attached to the sand's surface. The efficacy of the filter disinfection process was evaluated both with water spiked with E. coli and with real aqueous effluent from a wastewater treatment plant. For the former, over 7...

Broad-host-range plasmids are frequently associated with antibiotic resistance genes and can quickly spread antibiotic resistant phenotypes among diverse bacterial populations. Wastewater treatment plants have been identified as reservoirs for broad-host-range plasmids carrying resistance genes. The threat of broad-host-range plasmids released into the environment from wastewater treatment plan...

Disinfection byproduct (DBP) precursors in wastewater during the reversed anaerobic-anoxic-oxic (A2/O) process, as well as their molecular weight (MW) and polarity-based fractions, were characterized with UV scanning, fluorescence excitation emission matrix, Fourier transform infrared and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Their DBP formation potentials (DBPFPs) after chlorination were fu...