CHAMPAIGN, Ill., 3/13/24: The National Science Foundation recently announced the awarding of 15 grants, totaling $9.8 million, to interdisciplinary teams under Track K: Equitable Water Solutions, focused on research to benefit society at large. The University of Illinois team, working with researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, received $650,000 for a one-year effort to further develop their idea of passive sampling of water quality at the tap.
The Illinois-Wash U team will be developing a drinking water quality monitoring system based on point-of-use (POU) water filters. A major focus of the research is to support residents who use private wells for their water supply. However, both public water systems serving disadvantaged communities and large water systems in urban locations with aging infrastructure, where the likelihood of contamination and adverse health outcomes may be elevated, will be studied.
“There are 23 million homes in the US with private wells as their water supply,” said Steven Wilson, Principal Scientist for the Illinois State Water Survey at the Prairie Research Institute (PRI) and co-principal investigator for the project. “They are not subject to testing under the Safe Drinking Water Act, and many have never been tested for water quality, nor do many homeowners using private wells understand the potential risk and necessity to test.”
If successful, these POU filters will allow for monitoring of drinking water to understand what constituents might be present in the water and provide a continuous level of public health protection while in use.
The project goal is to evaluate the ability of commercially available POU filters, such as faucet-mounted filters, to monitor lead, copper, zinc, manganese, hexavalent chromium, arsenic, microorganisms, pesticides, and per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS chemicals). All are linked to adverse health outcomes and can be found in the environment either naturally occurring or from man-made contamination.
The Illinois team consists of three co-PIs, Thanh Huong Nguyen, the Ivan Racheff Professor of Environmental Engineering in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering; Steven Wilson, groundwater hydrologist and Principal Scientist for the Illinois State Water Survey at PRI; and John Scott, Senior Analytical Chemist for the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center at PRI.
The Washington University team is headed by Daniel Giammar, the Walter E. Browne Professor of Environmental Engineering and lead PI on the project. His co-principal investigators from Wash U include Fangqiong Ling and Kimberly Parker, both assistant professors of energy, environmental & chemical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering, and Joe Steensma, professor of practice at the Brown School of Social Work.
The project team also includes several important external partners, including the Midwest Assistance Program and RCAP Solutions, who are both regional members of the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP); the Water Quality Association; and the US Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development.
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Media contact:
Tiffany Jolley, Assistant Director of Strategic Communications
Prairie Research Institute
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Tjolley2@illinois.edu
(217) 300-2356
About the Prairie Research Institute:
The Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is the state's premier natural resource research organization, dedicated to providing the scientific understanding and technologies needed to manage Illinois' natural resources for a sustainable future.
About NSF’s Convergence Accelerator Program:
The NSF Convergence Accelerator builds upon basic research and discovery to accelerate solutions toward societal impact. The program brings together multiple disciplines and stakeholders to solve complex challenges through partnerships and innovation.
