Besides being a naturally occurring element and an essential micronutrient, copper is used as a pesticide, but at generally higher concentrations. Copper, unlike organic pesticides, does not degrade, but rather enters a complex biogeochemical cycle. In the water column, copper can exist bound to both organic and inorganic species and as free or hydrated copper ions. Water column chemistry affec...

Corrosion of copper pipes may release high amounts of copper into the water, exceeding the maximum concentration of copper for drinking water standards. Typically, the events with the highest release of copper into drinking water are related to the presence of biofilms. This article reviews this phenomenon, focusing on copper ingestion and its health impacts, the physicochemical mechanisms and ...

The observation was made in certain controlled nutrient solution studies with sugar beet and barley, that toxicity was associated with the supply of distilled water. The toxic element was referred to copper. The condition arose from storage of the distilled water in tin-lined copper tanks in which areas of exposed copper were evident. Direct analysis, by the colorimetric sodium diethyldithiocar...

Many copper water lines for municipal drinking water in Santa Fe, New Mexico USA, have developed pinhole leaks. The pitting matches the description of Type I pitting of copper, which has historically been attributed to water chemistry and to contaminants on the copper tubing surface. However, more recent studies attribute copper pitting to microbial induced corrosion (MIC). In order to test for...

Water dissociation on copper is one of the rate-limiting steps in the water-gas-shift (WGS) reaction. Copper atoms dispersed evenly from freshly made catalyst segregate to form clusters under the WGS operating conditions. Using density functional theory, we have examined water adsorption and dissociation on the smallest stable 3-dimensional copper cluster, Cu(7). Water molecules are adsorbed on...

Using pottery clay, porous ceramic stones were molded and then decorated with copper sub-microparticles inside the pores. Copper added antimicrobial functionality to the clay-based ceramic and showed ability in disinfecting water. Populations of both Staphylococcus aureus and Klebsiella pneumoniae in contaminated water were reduced by >99.9% in 3 h when exposed to an antimicrobial stone. This a...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Copper is one of the main micronutrients in the human body. Malfunction in copper homeostasis results in Menkes syndrome and Wilson’s disease, which are associated with complications such as seizure and impairments in learning and memory. Use of high copper concentrations can cause permanent damage to the cells and neurons. The aim of this study was to examine the toxi...

The aim of this paper was to study the influence of microbial biofilms on the high copper levels measured in the drinking water of rural houses. Drinking water parameters and copper pipe surfaces were analysed in the copper plumbing systems of rural and urban houses. The water in rural houses had pH values of 6.2 and alkalinity values of 63mg/L as CaCO3, whereas in urban houses the pH values we...

The main objective of the study was to use a species comparison approach in order to understand sensitivity and tolerance differences to copper. We hypothesized that species differences in toxicity would be reflected by differences in copper binding to high-affinity sites on the gill. Specifically, the strength of copper binding (affinity, logK) and maximum number of binding sites (saturation, ...

The objective of this study was to determine the acute gastrointestinal effects caused by the consumption of drinking water containing graded levels of added copper. Sixty healthy, adult women were randomly assigned to receive copper [Cu(II)] at four concentrations in their drinking water following a Latin-square design. Each group (n = 15) received tap water with no added copper, 1, 3, and 5 m...