Publications related to Flint water crisis

Sunshine and a pinch of tropical soils: A natural, low-cost photo-Fenton variation for safer water, assisted by H2O2 or percabonate

César Pulgarin, Michaël Bensimon, Stefanos Giannakis, Thomas Guillaume, Jérémie Decker

Clean water is essential for human survival, but access to safe drinking water remains a challenge in resource -limited regions. Herein, we explored a low-cost but effective solution for water potabilization using natural iron sources from soils along with ...

ELSEVIER2023

Participatory research to monitor lake water pollution

Luc Patiny, Carlos Vivar Rios, Rachel Aronoff

A participatory research team, concerned about water quality around Lake Geneva, particularly in the Montreux Bay region where some were lifeguards, ran sampling campaigns to determine summertime levels of lake water pollution. The participants were brough ...

WILEY2021

Technical note: Evaluation of a low-cost evaporation protection method for portable water samplers

Jana Freiin von Freyberg

Automated field sampling of streamwater or precipitation for subsequent analysis of stable water isotopes (H-2 and O-18) is often conducted with off-the-shelf automated samplers. However, when water samples are stored in the field for days and weeks in ope ...

2020

Assessment of the breakthrough of micropollutants in full-scale granular activated carbon adsorbers by rapid small-scale column tests and a novel pilot-scale sampling approach

Urs von Gunten, Juliane Hollender

This study aimed to compare three approaches for predicting the service life of full-scale GAC adsorbers for the removal of micropollutants. The approaches included (i) rapid small-scale column tests (RSSCTs), (ii) two pilot-scale sampling approaches, and ...

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2020

The Demographics of Water: A Review of Water Ages in the Critical Zone

Paolo Benettin

The time that water takes to travel through the terrestrial hydrological cycle and the critical zone is of great interest in Earth system sciences with broad implications for water quality and quantity. Most water age studies to date have focused on indivi ...

2019

Human domination of the global water cycle absent from depictions and perceptions

Camille Roland Marie Minaudo

Human water use, climate change and land conversion have created a water crisis for billions of individuals and many ecosystems worldwide. Global water stocks and fluxes are estimated empirically and with computer models, but this information is conveyed t ...

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP2019

Assessment of water resource contamination by pesticides in vegetable-producing areas in Burkina Faso

Luiz Felippe De Alencastro, Edouard René Gilbert Lehmann, Jean-Jacques Stéphane Nfon Dibie, Morgan Fargues

This study proposes a comprehensive approach to investigate water resource contamination by pesticides under the specific climatic and hydrological conditions of the Sudano-Sahelian climate. Samples were collected from tradi- tional wells, boreholes, and a ...

2018

Dietary risk assessment of pesticides from vegetables and drinking water in gardening areas in Burkina Faso

Luiz Felippe De Alencastro, Edouard René Gilbert Lehmann

Vegetables and water samples have been collected around the lake of Loumbila in Burkina Faso. Pesticides resi- dues in food commodities were analyzed using a modified QuEChERS extraction method prior analysis on GC-MS and UPLC-MS/MS of 31 pesticides. Maxim ...

Elsevier2017

Molecular-level characterization of curved water interfaces with sum frequency and second harmonic scattering

Nikolay Smolentsev

Aqueous interfaces are omnipresent in nature. Some of them are visible: droplets in clouds, aerosols, and surfaces of oceans, lakes, and rivers. Many more surfaces are hidden: water in contact with cell membranes, proteins, and the surface of droplets in e ...

EPFL2017

Nitrate formation during ozonation as a surrogate parameter for abatement of micropollutants and the N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) formation potential

Urs von Gunten, Florian Frédéric Vincent Breider, Jun Ma, Yang Song

In this study, nitrate formation from ammonium and/or dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) was investigated as a novel surrogate parameter to evaluate the abatement of micropollutants during ozonation of synthetic waters containing natural organic matter (NOM) ...

Elsevier2017

BLOCKING PROBABILITY OF DRIFTWOOD AT OGEE CREST SPILLWAYS WITH PIERS: INFLUENCE OF WOODY DEBRIS CHARACTERISTICS

Anton Schleiss, Michael Pfister, José Pedro Gamito de Saldanha Calado Matos, Paloma Furlan

Spillways are designed to evacuate floods in a safe way. They should safely release water in order to avoid dam overtopping with its related damages. Nevertheless, it may be dangerous to assume that a flood is only carrying “clear” water. Large woody debri ...

2017

Fingerprinting the reactive toxicity pathways of 50 drinking water disinfection by-products

Urs von Gunten

A set of nine in vitro cellular bioassays indicative of different stages of the cellular toxicity pathway was applied to 50 disinfection by-products (DBPs) to obtain a better understanding of the commonalities and differences in the molecular mechanisms of ...

Elsevier2016

An in-situ assessment of low-density polyethylene and silicone rubber passive samplers using methods with and without performance reference compounds in the context of investigation of polychlorinated biphenyl sources in rivers

Luiz Felippe De Alencastro, Nicolas Estoppey, Adrien Schopfer, Camille Fong

This study firstly aims to assess the field performances of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and silicone rubber (SR) samplers for the monitoring of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in water regarding the uptake, the sam- pling rate (RS) estimated by using ...

Elsevier Science Bv2016

Mechanistic Study on the Formation of Cl-/Br-/I-Trihalomethanes during Chlorination/Chloramination Combined with a Theoretical Cytotoxicity Evaluation

Urs von Gunten

Chlorination followed by chloramination can be used to mitigate the formation of potentially toxic iodinated disinfection byproducts (I-DBPs) while controlling the formation of regulated chloro-bromo-DBPs (Cl-/Br-DBPs). Water samples containing dissolved o ...

American Chemical Society2015

Experiments in hydrologic solute transport

Pierre Claude Jean Queloz

This thesis deal with experimental, field and modeling studies on reactive solute transport within hydrologic control volumes. The substances used in open environments for plant protection and other purposes are likely to be flushed by rainfall and enter i ...

EPFL2015

Design of a diversion structure for the management of residual risks using physical model tests

Giovanni De Cesare, Raphaël Sprenger, Antoine Magnollay

As revitalization and protection against floods are essential in our time, the town of Delémont in Switzerland has set up a major project named “Delémont Marée Basse”. Part of the project, the residual risk plans to be managed by a lateral overflow bypassi ...

CRC Press/Balkema2014

Non-contact assessment of COD and turbidity concentrations in water using diffuse reflectance UV-Vis spectroscopy

David Andrew Barry, Luca Rossi, Oliver Akermann, Jon Skirnir Agustsson

Water contamination is an important environmental concern underlining the need for reliable real-time information on contaminant concentrations in natural waters. Here, a new non-contact UV-Vis spectroscopic approach for monitoring contaminants in water, a ...

Royal Soc Chemistry2014

Spatial extent and ecotoxicological risk assessment of a micropollutant-contaminated wastewater plume in Lake Geneva

Tamar Kohn, Jeremy Samuel Arey, Florence Bonvin, Yosef Akhtman, Auréline Grange, Rebecca Rutler, Lorenzo Martelletti

In this study, the spatial extent of a wastewater-influenced water mass originating from a wastewater treatment plant outlet in Vidy Bay (Lake Geneva) was monitored by two manned submersibles from June to August 2011. The main goal was to assess whether mi ...

Springer Verlag2014

Evaluation of the efficiency of the photo Fenton disinfection of natural drinking water source during the rainy season in the Sahelian region

César Pulgarin, Juliette Ndounla

The photo-disinfection of water from two different wells (W1, pH: 4.6–5.1 ± 0.02) and (W2 pH: 5.6–5.7 ± 0.02) was carried out during the rainy season at Ouagadougou–Burkina Faso, West Africa. The weather variation during the rainy season significantly affe ...

Elsevier2014

The herbicide glyphosate and its metabolite AMPA in the Lavaux vineyard area, western Switzerland: proof of widespread export to surface waters. Part I: Method validation in different water matrices

Dominique Grandjean, Luiz Felippe De Alencastro

An analytical method for the quantification of the widely used herbicide, glyphosate, its main by-product, aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA) and the herbicide glufosinate at trace level was developed and tested in different aqueous matrices. Their derivati ...

2013