Small Amounts of Pharmaceuticals Found in North Central Pa. Rural Well Water

Date: July 31, 2018
Source: Penn State
Summary: Drinking water from wells in rural north central Pennsylvania had low levels of pharmaceuticals, according to a new study.

While septic tanks are generally installed downgradient of wells, contaminant from septic systems can impact well water quality, especially if the septic systems are not maintained or were improperly installed. Pharmaceuticals that are incompletely degraded in septic tanks and leaching fields can travel with wastewater and infiltrate groundwater.
Credit: Heather Gall Research Group / Penn State

Drinking water from wells in rural north central Pennsylvania had low levels of pharmaceuticals, according to a study led by Penn State researchers.

Partnering with volunteers in the University's Pennsylvania Master Well Owner Network, researchers tested water samples from 26 households with private wells in nine counties in the basin of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. All samples were analyzed for seven over-the-counter and prescription pharmaceuticals: acetaminophen, ampicillin, caffeine, naproxen, ofloxacin, sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim.

At least one compound was detected at all sites. Ofloxacin and sulfamethoxazole -- antibiotics prescribed for the treatment of a number of bacterial infections -- were the most frequently detected compounds. Caffeine was detected in approximately half of the samples, while naproxen -- an anti-inflammatory drug used for the management of pain, fever and inflammation -- was not detected in any samples.

"It is now widely known that over-the-counter and prescription medications are routinely present at detectable levels in surface and groundwater bodies," said Heather Gall, assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering, whose research group in the Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences conducted the study. "The presence of these emerging contaminants has raised both environmental and public health concerns, particularly when these water supplies are used as drinking water sources."

The good news, Gall pointed out, is that the concentrations of the pharmaceuticals in groundwater sampled were extremely low -- at parts per billion levels. However, given that sampling with the Master Well Owner Network only occurred once, the frequency of occurrence, range of concentrations and potential health risks are not yet well understood, especially for these private groundwater supplies.

The researchers used a simple modeling approach based on the pharmaceuticals' physicochemical parameters -- degradation rates and sorption factors -- to provide insight into the differences in frequency of detection for the target pharmaceuticals, noted lead researcher Faith Kibuye, who will graduate with a doctoral degree in biorenewable systems next year.

She explained that calculations revealed that none of the concentrations observed in the groundwater wells posed any significant human health risk, with risk quotients that are well below the minimal value. However, the risk assessment does not address the potential effect of exposure to mixtures of pharmaceuticals that are likely present in water simultaneously, she said. For example, as many as six of the analyzed pharmaceuticals were detected in some groundwater samples.

"There remains a major concern that even at low concentrations, pharmaceuticals could interact together and influence the biochemical functioning of the human body, so even at very low concentrations they might have some kind of synergistic effect," Kibuye said. "We only analyzed for seven pharmaceuticals but the chances are that there may have been many more."

The findings of the research -- which Kibuye will present today (July 31) at the annual meeting of the American Association of Agricultural and Biological Engineers in Detroit -- should be of interest the world over because groundwater is a critical supply of drinking water globally.

It is estimated that half of the population accesses potable water from groundwater aquifers. In the United States, approximately 13 million households use private wells as their drinking water source, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In Pennsylvania, approximately one-third of the residents receive their drinking water from private groundwater wells, Penn State Extension surveys show.

It is common for homeowners with private wells to also have septic tanks on their properties for treatment of their wastewater. And while septic tanks are generally installed downgradient of the well, it is possible that contaminant from septic systems can impact well-water quality, especially if the septic systems are not maintained or were improperly installed.

"While common contaminant issues include fecal coliform, E. coli and nitrate, pharmaceuticals and other compounds of emerging concern pose potential threats to well water quality," Kibuye said. "Pharmaceuticals that are incompletely degraded in septic tanks and leaching fields can therefore travel with wastewater plumes and impact groundwater, potentially making septic systems important point sources to surrounding domestic groundwater sources."

Story Source:

Penn State. "Small amounts of pharmaceuticals found in north central Pa. rural well water." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 31 July 2018. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180731141630.htm

Could water-saving "shade balls" have a shady side?

By Ben Coxworth

July 17th, 2018

The shade balls getting dispersed into the LA Reservoir
(Credit: Eric Garcetti/CC 2.0)

Three years ago, the drought-stricken city of Los Angeles covered the surface of the LA Basin with 96 million shade-providing floating balls, in order to keep the water beneath from evaporating. Now, an international study suggests that the making of the plastic balls may have have used up more water than they saved.

The "shade balls" were left in place on the reservoir for approximately one and a half years, during the latter part of the 2011 - 2017 California drought. According to the study, they kept an estimated 1.7 million cubic meters (60 million cubic feet) of water from evaporating. Unfortunately, however, it is also estimated that production of the balls used up 2.9 million cubic meters of water (102 million cubic feet). This happened at locations where the oil and natural gas used to produce the plastic were refined, and where the electricity necessary for production was generated.

In order for the shade balls to save as much water as was used in manufacturing them, they would reportedly have to be left on the reservoir for at least two and a half years – and that's only if drought conditions persisted for the entire period.

Additionally, the study points out that the manufacturing process would have had other negative environmental costs, such as the generation of carbon emissions and water pollution.

"We are very good at quick technological fixes, but we often overlook the long-term and secondary impacts of our solutions," says study co-author Dr. Kaveh Madani, from Imperial College London. "This is how the engineering community has been solving problems; solving one problem somewhere and creating a new problem elsewhere … We are not suggesting that shade balls are bad and must not be used. We are just highlighting the fact that the environmental cost of shade balls must be considered together with their benefits."

The findings of the study, which also included scientists from MIT in the US and the University of Twente in the Netherlands, were recently published in the journal Nature Sustainability.

Source: Imperial College London
Story Source: https://newatlas.com/shade-balls-water-usage/55499/

Water Efficiency in Rural Areas is Getting Worse, Even as it Improves in Urban Centers

Date: May 18, 2017
Source: North Carolina State University
Summary: A nationwide analysis of water use over the past 30 years finds that there is a disconnect between rural and urban areas, with most urban areas becoming more water efficient and most rural areas becoming less and less efficient over time.

This map shows spatio-temporal patterns of water-use efficiency (per-capita consumption) across the continental United States. Colors indicate the change in per-capita consumption, in gallons per day per person, computed as the difference between 2010 and 1985 estimates. The numbers shown in each state indicate the number of 5-year periods each state reduced its per-capita withdrawals from 1985 to 2010.
Credit: Sankar Arumugam

A nationwide analysis of water use over the past 30 years finds that there is a disconnect between rural and urban areas, with most urban areas becoming more water efficient and most rural areas becoming less and less efficient over time.

"Understanding water use is becoming increasingly important, given that climate change is likely to have a profound impact on the availability of water supplies," says Sankar Arumugam, lead author of a paper on the work. "This research helps us identify those areas that need the most help, and highlights the types of action that may be best suited to helping those areas." Arumugam is a University Faculty Scholar and professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at North Carolina State University.

The new paper stems from a National Science Foundation-funded, interuniversity research project which focuses on understanding how water sustainability in the United States has changed over the past 30 years as a result of climate change and population growth.

For this paper, researchers evaluated water use data at the state and county level for the 48 contiguous states. Specifically, the researchers looked at water-use efficiency, measured as per capita consumption, in 5-year increments, from 1985 to 2010.

"This is the first systematic evaluation of water use across the continental U.S.," Arumugam says. "And we found that some states -- including Washington, Pennsylvania and Wyoming -- were becoming more efficient every five years. Meanwhile, other states -- such as South Carolina, Oklahoma and Mississippi -- have gotten worse every five years."

But a look at the county-level data reveals what may be the most important finding: most rural counties are getting less efficient, while most urban counties are getting more efficient.

"In other words, as we are facing a more uncertain future regarding water resources, rural counties are being left behind," Arumugam says.

The researchers found that investment in new water-efficiency technologies, and retrofitting existing water infrastructure, are big reasons for the improvement in urban areas.

"Rural counties appear to lack the resources, the political will, or both, to keep pace," Arumugam says.

Another important finding is that technologies and strategies focused on efficiency -- as opposed to large-scale projects, such as building new reservoirs -- have been extremely successful. These efforts have allowed urban areas to avoid sharp increases in water use, even as their populations have grown significantly.

"There may be a role for huge infrastructure projects at some point, but these findings underscore the value of focusing on efficiency measures -- and the need to pursue those measures in rural counties," Arumugam says.

Story Source: North Carolina State University. "Water efficiency in rural areas is getting worse, even as it improves in urban centers." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 18 May 2017. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170518140246.htm

"Water Windfall" Discovered Beneath California's Central Valley

Date: June 27, 2016

Source: Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences

Summary: New research indicates that California's Central Valley harbors three times more groundwater than previously estimated, but challenges to using it include pumping costs, ground subsidence and possible contamination from fracking and other oil and gas activities.

This image shows the California Aqueduct, with the Lost Hills Oil Field in the background.
Credit: Rob Jackson, Stanford University

California's drought-stricken Central Valley harbors three times more groundwater than previously estimated, Stanford scientists have found. Accessing this water in an economically feasible way and safeguarding it from possible contamination from oil and gas activities, however, will be challenging.

"It's not often that you find a 'water windfall,' but we just did," said study co-author Robert Jackson, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor at Stanford. "There's far more fresh water and usable water than we expected."

The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of June 27, highlights the need to better characterize and protect deep groundwater aquifers not only in California but in other parched regions as well.

"Our findings are relevant to a lot of other places where there are water shortages, including Texas, China and Australia," said study co-author Mary Kang, a postdoctoral associate at Stanford School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.

A Fresh Look at Groundwater

Previous estimates of groundwater in California are based on data that are decades old and only extend to a maximum depth of 1,000 feet, and often less. Until now, little was known about the amount and quality of water in deeper aquifers.

"Water a thousand feet down used to be too expensive to use," said Jackson, who is also a senior fellow at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Precourt Institute for Energy. "Today it's used widely. We need to protect all of our good quality water."

Times are different now. California is in the midst of its fifth year of severe drought, and in 2014 Gov. Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency in the state. To meet its surface water needs, the state is increasingly turning to groundwater supplies.

In the new study, Jackson and Kang used data from 938 oil and gas pools and more than 35,000 oil and gas wells to characterize both shallow and deep groundwater sources in eight California counties.

The researchers concluded that when deeper sources of groundwater are factored in, the amount of usable groundwater in the Central Valley increases to 2,700 cubic kilometers -- or almost triple the state's current estimates.

Complications to Consider

While this is good news for California, the findings also raise some concerns. First, much of the water is 1,000 to 3,000 feet underground, so pumping it will be more expensive. Without proper studies, tapping these deeper aquifers might also exacerbate the ground subsidence -- the gradual sinking of the land -- that is already happening throughout the Central Valley. Groundwater pumping from shallow aquifers has already caused some regions to drop by tens of feet.

Furthermore, some of the deep aquifer water is also brinier -- higher in salt concentration -- than shallower water, so desalination or other treatment will be required before it can be used for agriculture or for drinking.

Another concern the Stanford scientists uncovered is that oil and gas drilling activities are occurring directly into as much as 30 percent of the sites where the deep groundwater resources are located. For example, in Kern County, where the core of California's oil and gas industry is centered near the city of Bakersfield, one in every six cases of oil and gas activities was occurring directly into freshwater aquifers. For useable water -- water that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency deems drinkable if treated -- the number was one in three.

Jackson and Kang stress that just because a company has hydraulically fractured or used some other chemical treatment near an aquifer doesn't mean that the water is ruined.

"What we are saying is that no one is monitoring deep aquifers. No one's following them through time to see how and if the water quality is changing," Kang said. "We might need to use this water in a decade, so it's definitely worth protecting."

Story Source: Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. "Water windfall' discovered beneath California's Central Valley." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 27 June 2016. .

Rivers Might Constitute Just 20 Percent of Continental Water Flowing into Oceans

Date: February 2, 2015

Source: University of South Carolina

Summary: The Amazon, Nile and Mississippi are mighty rivers, but they and all their worldwide brethren might be a relative trickle compared with an unseen torrent below the surface. New research shows that rivers might constitute as little as 20 percent of the water that flows yearly into the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific Oceans from the continents. The rest flows through what is termed the 'subterranean estuary,' which some researchers think supply the lion's share of terrestrial nutrients to the oceans.

Professor emeritus Willard Moore was elected this year as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which is among the oldest scientific societies in America and is the publisher of the journal Science.

In recently published research, Moore was part of a team that used observed concentrations of radium-228 to model the global distribution of the radionuclide between 60 degrees South and 70 degrees North latitude. [Image adapted from Geophysical Research Letters]

If you think rivers are what send terrestrial rainfall back into the oceans, you don't know the half of it. And that fraction keeps shrinking. According to new research, it might be that only one-fifth of the water flowing from the continents into the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific Oceans runs through overland channels of water. And just as surprising, a vast amount flows into the land from the ocean.

University of South Carolina professor Willard Moore is part of an international team that recently estimated how much of the water flowing into the oceans comes not from surface rivers, creeks and streams, but instead from what he has termed the "subterranean estuary." For two decades, Moore has drawn attention to the oft-overlooked flow and exchange of ocean and groundwater in the permeable layers of rock and sediment, a process that occurs both near the coastline and extending out on the continental shelf. But the roots of his work in the field go back even further in his 50-year scientific career.

Developing the Tools of the Trade

Soon after earning a doctorate at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Moore began working in the early 1970s as a civilian in the Naval Oceanographic Office, then located in Maryland. The task at hand was to study deep ocean processes, and one of the best tools for doing that was to measure the amounts of certain naturally occurring radioactive elements dissolved in the seawater at different locations and depths.

"There's a little bit of uranium and thorium in all rocks, and as those elements decay, they produce a whole string of different elements, which themselves are radioactive," Moore says. "So say a rock is in seawater and the uranium decays to thorium and then it decays to radium. Well, the radium is much more soluble than the other components, so it can go into solution in the seawater. There are very few ways to remove it naturally, except by radioactive decay."

Moore likens the radium that dissolves from a rock to a dye that slowly loses its intensity over time. The half-life of radium establishes how fast the "dye" loses intensity, and by measuring how radium concentrations diminish with increasing distance from the seafloor -- the rock source -- a scientist can come up with a model for how the water there is flowing and mixing.

A major shortcoming at the time, though, was how laborious it was to collect data. Radioactive elements are present in very small concentrations in seawater.

"It used to be that you needed about 600 to 800 liters of water," amounting to more than 200 gallons for a single data point, Moore says. "It was a very time-consuming series of chemical processes, and I decided early on that if we were really going to use radium to understand the ocean, we had to have a better way to extract it."

From Lake Oneida to the Sea

Moore put together a new method after mulling over a few disparate observations. Some colleagues had come up with a much more efficient means for extracting a different radioactive isotope, silicon-32, by coating an acrylic fiber with an iron compound and then exposing it to flowing seawater. Silica (which contains silicon-32) in the water is adsorbed onto the fiber, effectively concentrating the radionuclide into a much smaller area (namely, on the surface of the fiber rather than dispersed in many gallons of water).

The iron coating on the fiber didn't pick up radium, but Moore found something that did while working on a small side project. He was trying to understand the growth of a characteristic kind of rock formation found in certain places on the bottom of Lake Oneida, a freshwater lake of glacial origin in central New York. The formation is called a manganese nodule, which has alternating layers rich in manganese and iron oxides.

In the course of that research, he found that the nodules were rich in radium as well, which put him on the idea that perhaps manganese dioxide could be used to extract radium from seawater.

"I remember very clearly when I saw the first counts on the radium in the nodule. I walked into the lab, mixed up a manganese solution, and put it on the fiber," Moore says. "I was living on Chesapeake Bay and had a sailboat, so I went out, towed it through the bay, came back and it was loaded with radium. It's just an illustration of how if you have several irons in the fire, they all don't get hot at the same time, but sometimes one will ignite another one."

Putting the Tools to Work

Moore joined the Carolina faculty in 1976 with a ready means of determining radium concentration in seawater, and he expanded his repertoire from the deep-sea research that characterized his work with the Navy to closer-to-shore studies. A primary goal in South Carolina was to understand the exchange processes between water and surface sediments in estuaries near the coastline.

Much of the early work with radium, though, raised all sorts of questions, Moore says. The gradients they were seeing simply didn't make sense, but in retrospect it was because one basic assumption was way off.

At the time, it was generally thought that groundwater flow into the ocean was insignificant, maybe 3 percent to 5 percent of river flow, Moore says. The breakthrough came when one of his colleagues suggested that a sizable salty groundwater flow must be responsible for their observations.

They measured radium in inland wells, finding that fresh groundwater had almost none, but that saltier groundwater was loaded with it. The inescapable conclusion: water from the ocean was being exchanged with groundwater in prodigious quantities, and it was happening underground.

"The action was in the permeable sediments below. It started this whole idea that the continents were connected to the ocean not only by riverine processes, but by submarine processes." Moore says. "I came up with the term subterranean estuary. So just like the surface estuary, it's the region between the coast and the ocean where freshwater is coming in on one side and seawater is coming in on the other side, they're mixing, and after chemical reactions, some of that water is expelled back into the ocean."

Moore was part of an international team that developed a quantitative model for submarine groundwater discharge across most of the globe, and they just published a paper in Geophysical Research Letters showing that the amount of subterranean water flow into the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific Oceans is some three to four times that of all rivers combined. Perhaps even more important is the conclusion that most of the flow of terrestrial nutrients is subterranean.

"If you put a lot of nutrients into the ocean, you increase primary productivity. You make lots of algae, which may be good, but excessive algae settles out and as it decays it uses up oxygen from the bottom water," Moore says. "We call it hypoxia, where the oxygen is so low fish can't breathe. So, productivity is a delicate balance.

"Currently, in most of the estimates of how nutrients come into the water, it's thought to be coming from rivers, springs, streams -- things you can see -- or from point source pollution, sewage, drainage pipes off of golf courses. But people have not considered how much is coming from the subterranean estuary. It's a whole biogeochemical process that's going on that people haven't really thought about very much."

Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by University of South Carolina. The original article was written by Steven Powell.