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By Sam Masson
Well, we’ve again made it through the hectic, Thanksgiving-to-New Years holiday season, and now that all the revelry, traveling, and spending time with family and friends are behind us, it’s time to focus our attention on the year ahead. Our new years’ resolutions frequently tend to be the same, year in and year out... this person’s going to adhere to a new diet, this one’s going to start going to the gym, this other one has sworn he’s not going to drink anymore— just as he did at the same time last year. These resolutions come at the time that they do, because the holidays invariably put a strain on both our physiology and our psychology... by the time the new year arrives, we’ve all crammed a years worth of flying, family, and fatty food and drink into six short weeks, so “getting back to normal” comes as a welcome relief for many of us.
The resolutions are what they are—“I am going to do this,” “I’m not going to do that”—because we haven’t been in our regular routine for a little while. And, just like it’s a lot more fun to have a party than to clean up afterwards, so it goes that our new years’ resolutions have to do with buckling down, tightening the belt, and returning to form.
I mention this because this issue of Onsite Water Treatment features the first of two articles about the unintended hazards to public health and safety posed by PPCPs. If you don’t recognize the acronym, you’re not alone; just a few months ago, I hadn’t heard of it, either. PPCP stands for pharmaceuticals and personal care products, which are two titanic industries in the United States, the benefits of which are obvious and ever-present, but whose byproducts can have profoundly negative effects once they enter our wastestream. Do the antibacterial compounds that we put in our soap, toothpaste, and mouthwash to kill germs stop working after they go down the drain? No, they keep right on going... and of course, a key component of wastewater treatment involves bacterial breakdown and decomposition.
When this process stops, we’re no longer properly disposing of our waste so much as we’re sitting on a ticking bomb. Additionally, combining chemicals in the liquid wastestream can create new, unstudied compounds that can have hazardous, if not fatal consequences.
Although Onsite Water Treatment examines this problem exclusively from the subset of the liquid wastestream, it should certainly be something to be considered for solid waste management as well, because similar “blind spots” exist in every aspect of waste disposal. I imagine that the new, unforeseen chemical reactions taking place in landfills are as much of a concern as the hormones and steroids in our groundwater, possibly with equal consequence to environmental and personal health, and probably more difficult to deal with, as well.
As we continue to throw more and more of our cleaners and prescription drugs down the sink, we will have to address the various things that shouldn’t get into that wastestream, but do anyway. Once they’re in there, what happens to them? How do they grow, change, and become stronger? What can be done to help break down the dangerous compounds we’re combining in our wastewater?
We would all do well to consider the unintended side-effects of what we throw away—both from a professional standpoint in the industry, and from our own, consumer/end-user perspectives.
OW - January/February 2007 |
