• Bangor University (UK),
• EHESP Ecole des Hautes Études (France),
• Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UK).

This highly integrated multidisciplinary project engages the skills of environmental scientists, mathematical modellers, analytical chemists, toxicologists and public health scientists to address health vulnerability issues resulting from future environmental change impacts on soil-water ecosystems at a regional scale. It will address the health implications of a recently observed rise in Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC), a key constraint on water quality, for potable water abstraction.

The research at IRAS will explore the influence of DOC quality and quality on the removal of contaminants during water treatment processes.

Sorption to DOC and activated carbon will be determined for several classes of organic chemicals (PCBs, PAHs) and emerging contaminants such as perfluorinated compounds, hormones and pharmaceuticals. The effects of solution chemistry, the structure of the contaminants and DOC on sorption coefficients and persistence following water treatment will determined using classical techniques such as dialysis in addition to a relatively new technology with solid phase micro extraction (SPME) or Polyoxymethylene (POM) solid phase.

Different types of natural organic matter will be tested using standard reference organic materials. In addition, natural organic matter isolated from the locations will be applied as well. Data for neutral non-polar and polar organic contaminants, will be used to develop qualitative and, if possible, more quantitative models describing the sorption as a function of the chemicals' properties, solution chemistry and organic matter characteristics. Such an approach is feasible for neutral organics, but our limited theoretical insight into sorption of ionized chemicals and lack of modeling tools will not allow us to develop quantitative models for sorption of these ionized compounds. The generation of data for sorption of ionized chemicals, however, is of substantial interest because the availability of such data in the literature is still limited

Modelling of organic contaminant sorption to DOC will be performed using quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) and linear free energy relationship (LFER) approaches.