A review of the literature published in 2014 on topics relating to public and environmental health risks associated with wastewater treatment, reuse, and disposal is presented. This review is divided into the following sections: wastewater management, microbial hazards, chemical hazards, wastewater reuse, wastewater treatment plants, wastewater disposal, and sludge and biosolids.

Alternative wastewater treatment systems combat many on-site disposal problems, but no incentives are given to householders to improve the domestic wastewater quality before treatment or disposal. While governments address phosphorus reduction programs, the effect of sodium in wastewater is ignored. Many laundry detergents use sodium salts as fillers, adding significant sodium to the wastewater...

Erratum: “Radionuclides in Fracking Wastewater: Managing a Toxic Blend” The Focus article “Radionuclides in Fracking Wastewater: Managing a Toxic Blend” [Environ Health Perspect 122:A50–A55 (2014); http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.122-A50] incorrectly stated that Pennsylvania requires pit liners for temporary impoundments and disposal to have a minimum thickness of 30 mm. The correct minimum thick...

In this paper, the utilisation of zeolites synthesised from fly ash (FA) and related co-disposal filtrates as low-cost adsorbent material were investigated. When raw FA and co-disposal filtrates were subjected to alkaline hydrothermal zeolite synthesis, the zeolites faujasite, sodalite and zeolite A were formed. The synthesised zeolites were explored to establish its ability to remove lead and ...

Wastewater management focused, for many years, on the treatment of wastewater to protect the environment and safeguard the public health. An integrated approach to wastewater management is more extensive and includes the control of generation, collection and transport, treatment, disposal and reuse of wastewater in a manner that is in accord with the best principles of public health, economics,...

Raised public expectation and increasing politicalpressure, in the face of mounting evidence thatsubstantial numbers of on-site wastewater disposalsystems perform poorly or fail, has resulted in therevision of State Government Guidelines and theAustralian Standard 1547. These revised guidelinesrequire a wider range of skills of Environmental HealthOfficers and others...

Introduction There is a significant and inevitable fact in Turkey which is the “sludge problem” generated from the wastewater treatment plants. There are many sludge disposal techniques currently applied in Turkey such as incineration, landfilling, composting, etc.; but the disposal of sludge with those conventional methods is difficult and expensive, often requiring over 50 per cent of the ope...

The volume of sludge produced annually is very high and poses serious disposal problems. The traditional methods of sludge disposal produce secondary pollutants. Therefore, the alternate or suitable solution is reuse of sludge in an ecofriendly approach. Biotechnology is an interesting tool to add value to the processes involved in wastewater and wastewater sludge disposal/reuse. In this contex...

Pharmaceutical pollution in surface waters poses risks to human and ecosystem health. Wastewater treatment facilities are primary sources of pharmaceutical pollutants, but little is known about the factors that affect drugs entering the wastewater stream. This paper investigates the effects of student pharmaceutical use and disposal behaviors and an annual demographic shift on pharmaceutical po...

Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) can enter the natural environment during manufacture, use and/or disposal, and consequently public concern about their potential adverse impacts in the environment is growing. Despite the bulk of the human population living in Asia and Africa (mostly in low- or middle-income countries), limited work relating to research, development and regulations on AP...