Assessment of the water chemical quality improvement based on human health risk indexes: Application to a drinking water treatment plant incorporating membrane technologies.
A methodology has been developed in order to evaluate the potential risk of drinking water for the health of the consumers. The methodology used for the assessment considered systemic and carcinogenic effects caused by oral ingestion of water based on the reference data developed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Risk Assessment Information System (RAIS) for chemical contaminants. The exposure includes a hypothetical dose received by drinking this water according to the analysed contaminants. An assessment of the chemical quality improvement of produced water in the Drinking Water Treatment Plant (DWTP) after integration of membrane technologies was performed. Series of concentration values covering up to 261 chemical parameters over 5 years (2008-2012) of raw and treated water in the Sant Joan Despí DWTP, at the lower part of the Llobregat River basin (NE Spain), were used. After the application of the methodology, the resulting global indexes were located below the thresholds except for carcinogenic risk in the output of DWTP, where the index was slightly above the threshold during 2008 and 2009 before the upgrade of the treatment works including membrane technologies was executed. The annual evolution of global indexes showed a reduction in the global values for all situations: HQ systemic index based on RAIS dropped from 0.64 to 0.42 for surface water and from 0.61 to 0.31 for drinking water; the R carcinogenic index based on RAIS was negligible for input water and varied between 4.2×10(-05) and 7.4×10(-06) for drinking water; the W systemic index based on the WHO data varied between 0.41 and 0.16 for surface water and between 0.61 and 0.31 for drinking water. A specific analysis for the indexes associated with trihalomethanes (THMs) showed the same pattern.
CETaqua, Carretera d'Esplugues, 75 08940 Cornellà de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address: rlopez@aqualogy.net.
Ramón
R
López-Roldán
CTM Technological Centre Foundation, Plaça de la Ciència, No. 2, 08243 Manresa, Spain.
Alicia
A
Rubalcaba
Aigües de Barcelona, C/Gral. Batet 5-7, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain.
Jordi
J
Martin-Alonso
CETaqua, Carretera d'Esplugues, 75 08940 Cornellà de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain.
Susana
S
González
CTM Technological Centre Foundation, Plaça de la Ciència, No. 2, 08243 Manresa, Spain; Aigües de Barcelona, C/Gral. Batet 5-7, E-08028 Barcelona, Spain.
Vicenç
V
Martí
CETaqua, Carretera d'Esplugues, 75 08940 Cornellà de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain; Department of Chemical Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
Jose Luis
JL
Cortina
D060766:Drinking Water / Q000737:chemistry*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D006801:Humans; D058996:Quality Improvement; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000032:analysis*; D018508:Water Purification / Q000379:methods*
D060766:Drinking Water; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical
Global risk indexes; Human health risk assessment; Llobregat River; Membrane technologies; Trihalomethanes