Advanced Water Management Centre, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Qld 4072, Australia.
Chemosphere. 2010 Aug;80(7):794-9. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2010.05.001.
The discharge of treated wastewater into natural water bodies occurs worldwide; if drinking water is then extracted downstream, there is potential for micropollutants that are not fully mineralized in the wastewater treatment process to enter municipal drinking water. In Australia, drinking water treatment is typically a mixture of basic technologies such as flocculation and slow sand filtration; technologies that are not specifically designed to remove micropollutants. However, there is little awareness in Australia of the potential risk that upstream wastewater discharges may impart to the security and quality of downstream drinking water supplies. We apply a direct inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry technique to determine the discharge of anthropogenic gadolinium from a wastewater treatment plant in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, that discharges into the small (147 km(2)) catchment of Gowrie Creek. We then continue to measure the concentrations of this wastewater tracer as Gowrie Creek flows downstream into the Condomine River, and to a community 100 km away where drinking water is extracted. Using this tracer, we demonstrate that the community has a detectable wastewater contribution within their surface drinking water supply.
处理后的废水排入天然水体在世界范围内都有发生；如果在下游提取饮用水，那么在废水处理过程中没有完全矿化的微量污染物就有可能进入城市饮用水。在澳大利亚，饮用水处理通常是絮凝和慢砂过滤等基本技术的混合；这些技术并不是专门设计用来去除微量污染物的。然而，澳大利亚几乎没有意识到上游废水排放可能会对下游饮用水供应的安全性和质量造成的潜在风险。我们应用直接电感耦合等离子体质谱技术来确定澳大利亚昆士兰州图翁巴的一个污水处理厂排放的人为钆的排放量，该污水处理厂排放到 Gowrie Creek 的小流域（147km²）。然后，我们继续测量这种废水示踪剂在 Gowrie Creek 向下游流入 Condomine 河以及 100 公里外提取饮用水的社区的浓度。使用这种示踪剂，我们证明该社区的地表水饮用水供应中有可检测到的废水贡献。
