Illinois State Water Survey

blog posts

• Update on European Regulation of Estrogens

  Dec 7, 2012 9:30 am

  In a post last May, I wrote about the European Commission’s intent to regulate the synthetic estrogen compound ethinyl estradiol (EE2) under the Water Framework Directive. According to a recent article in Nature, those regulations will be not approved by the European Parliament. Intense lobbying by the water and pharmaceutical industries has apparently convinced the European Union member states that the financial costs are too much.

• Water Reuse

  Nov 9, 2012 2:30 pm

  How would you feel about drinking treated wastewater? Ick, right? But what if you were assured that it met all federal and state drinking water standards? Still doesn’t sound too appetizing? If that’s how you feel, you’re not alone. Proposals to reuse treated wastewater as a drinking water have been consistently shot down in the U.S.

   

• Bag It Redux: Plastics in the Environment

  Oct 23, 2012 4:45 pm

  The movie "Bag It: Is your life too plastic?", which was shown at the Art Theater in Champaign last fall and which I reviewed, is again being shown in town. It will be at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), 1 E. Hazelwood Drive, Champaign, on Thursday October 25, at 7:00 PM. It's located just west of the Research Park. Dr. B.K. Sharma, a senior chemist at the ISTC who is doing research on converting plastic bags into oil to potentially be used as fuel or lubricants, will give a 15 minute presentation before the film. Go!

   

• Antibiotics and Livestock

  Sep 14, 2012 3:00 pm

  An article in last week’s Science section of the New York Times (September 4, 2012) reported on the rise of antibiotic resistance in bacteria associated with livestock. I knew that a large percentage of antibiotics used in the U.S. went to livestock, but I didn’t realize it was 80 percent, as the Times article reports. There are no reporting requirements for the use of antibiotics in animals, so there is a serious lack of data on what’s happening in the environment as a result of this large-scale dosing of animals.

• Atrazine Court Settlement

  Aug 3, 2012 4:15 pm

  Atrazine is the second most heavily used pesticide in the U.S. (glyphosate is first), with around 80 million pounds applied annually, primarily to corn. Thus a map of atrazine use shows the greatest applications in the Midwest corn belt. It’s very good at what it’s designed to do, suppressing broadleaf and grassy weeds. One of its drawbacks, however, is that it is persistent in the environment, including water resources. Recently Syngenta, atrazine’s manufacturer, reached an agreement to set up a $105 million fund for use in removing atrazine from drinking water.

• Drought and Water Quality

  Jul 17, 2012 5:15 pm

  As I’m sure most everyone knows, we are in the midst of an extremely widespread and severe drought, one of the largest ever in the U.S. The entire state of Illinois is in drought, and parts of southern Illinois are in extreme and even exceptional drought, which is the worst category. During a drought, water quantity issues are obviously of most concern, especially as it affects agriculture and drinking water supplies. However, there are a few water quality issues as well.

   

• More thoughts on estrogens in the environment

  Jun 29, 2012 9:15 am

  In my last post I mentioned how the European Commission intends to regulate the synthetic estrogen compound ethinyl estradiol (EE2), which has been discovered to cause ecological damage to aquatic species. The Atlantic magazine recently published their annual “Ideas Issue,” and one of their big ideas was to allow the pill to be sold over the counter.

• Regulating pharmaceuticals

  Jun 8, 2012 10:15 am

  In a recent article published in Nature titled “The hidden costs of flexible fertility”, Richard Owen and Susan Jobling report that the European Commission recently announced that it intends to regulate the synthetic estrogen compound ethinyl estradiol (EE2) under the Water Framework Directive. With more than 100 million women worldwide using contraceptive pills, a lot of synthetic estrogen is entering the environment, causing negative effects to aquatic species, such as changing the sex of fish.

• Soda Consumption vs. Bottled Water

  May 18, 2012 9:45 am

  This isn’t really a water quality issue, but an article in the Business Section of the New York Times on May 16, 2012, reported that soda consumption is declining in America. That’s good news, right? Except that the decrease in soda consumption is almost completely balanced by an increase in bottled water consumption (since 1998). Seems like we Americans just like to buy bottles. Actually, the bottled water consumption has leveled off in the past few years, although it is still at an historic high. Why do we spend $1.29 for a bottle of water, when we can fill a glass or bottle from a tap and get water with at least as good quality, for fractions of a penny? Convenience, I guess. Or we are complete slaves to marketers.

• Fracking and Water Quality

  May 3, 2012 2:15 pm

  Currently one of the most controversial issues concerning groundwater quality is whether hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” might contaminate aquifers. Fracking involves the injection of water with “proppants” and chemical additives to open and enlarge fractures within a rock formation in order to release oil or gas. Proppants are usually sand or ceramic pellets which help hold open the created fractures. The chemical additives are currently considered to be proprietary, and thus their compositions are not available to the public. Fracking has been used by the oil and gas industry for many years, but recent advances in horizontal drilling technology have allowed exploitation of some gas-bearing geologic formations that were, until recently, uneconomical. The most famous of these formations is the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and New York.