Centre For The Control Of Emerging Contaminants: Protecting Our Water Supply

In May 2007 major media outlets across the country reported on a study by a Canadian fish researcher. What she’d discovered was that trace amounts of estrogen – used in birth control pills – found in lake water was enough to seriously distort development in entire fish species.

The report went largely unnoticed by the public, but it attracted the attention of Dr. Wayne Parker at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Parker is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and he’s been interested in “emerging contaminants” in water – and how they impact on human health – for years.

“Emerging contaminants is a term that encompasses thousands of compounds released into our water systems daily,” he says. “They include things like drug residues, personal care products, home care products, industrial chemicals, even exotic ‘new” compounds such as nanomaterials.

“Many of these compounds pass virtually unchanged through wastewater treatment systems that were never designed to remove them and can turn up in wells and municipal drinking water sources.”

Emerging contaminants, or ECs, are a growing concern to Canadians, yet their risks are poorly understood.

That’s about to change, however, thanks to Dr. Parker and a team of researchers from five Ontario universities, who are creating a Centre for the Control of Emerging Contaminants (CCEC). The $14.5 million centre, funded in part through the Ministry of Research and Innovation’s Research Excellence program, will bring together an interdisciplinary group of many of the most respected water scientists in Canada, as well as industry and government partners.

The centre will focus on the control of emerging contaminants in water and wastewater. Specifically, the researchers will develop and test new technologies for measuring, monitoring, controlling and removing ECs in current and next-generation water treatment systems.

“The technologies we develop will not only position Ontario as an international leader in the control of ECs, they will also have tremendous commercial spin-off potential,” says Dr. Parker. “The threats posed by ECs are global and developing effective ways of dealing with them will be highly profitable, which is why we’ve been able to attract a number of world leading Ontario-based companies to participate in the centre.”

One of them is Trojan Technologies. The London, Ontario-based company has advanced ultraviolet (UV) water treatment solutions in operation around the globe.

“There are always new contaminants on the horizon,” says Trojan’s vice president of research Dr. Ted Mao. “Collaborating with the centre will enable us to identify them more readily and develop new and better ways of treating them – which will help give us an important competitive advantage.”