Why do people remain attached to unsafe drinking water options? Quantitative evidence from Southwestern Bangladesh

The acceptance of newly implemented, safe drinking water options is not guaranteed. In the Khulna and Satkhira districts, Bangladesh, pond water is pathogen-contaminated, while groundwater from shallow tubewells may be arsenic- or saline-contaminated. This study aims to determine why, as well as the extent to which, people are expected to remain...

Simultaneous production of high-quality water and electrical power from aqueous feedstock’s and waste heat by high-pressure membrane distillation

A new membrane distillation (MD) concept (MemPower) has been developed for the simultaneous production of high-quality water from various aqueous feedstocks with cogeneration of mechanical power (electricity). Driven by low-grade heat (waste, solar, geothermal, etc.) a pressurized distillate can be produced by operating TNO’s Memstill® process...

Microbial biogeography of drinking water: Patterns in phylogenetic diversity across space and time

In this study, we collected water from different locations in 32 drinking water distribution networks in the Netherlands and analysed the spatial and temporal variation in microbial community composition by high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons. We observed that microbial community compositions of raw source and processed water...

A bio-thermic seawater desalination system using halophytes

A bio-thermic seawater desalination system using halophytes was developed and successfully tested. A greenhouse as part of a test rig, with different sorts of mangroves, was installed. Measurements showed promising results concerning fresh water relative yielding rates up to 1.4 kg/h/m2 (leaf surface)/m2 (heat exchanger surface). In addition to...

Developmental immunotoxicity of ethanol in an extended one-generation reproductive toxicity study

The susceptibility of developing immune system to chemical disruption warrants the assessment of immune parameters in reproductive and developmental testing protocols. In this study, a wide range of immune endpoints was included in an extended one-generation reproduction toxicity study (EOGRTS) design to determine the relative sensitivity of...

Formation and removal of genotoxic activity during UV/H₂O₂-GAC treatment of drinking water

The objective of this study was to determine the genotoxic activity of water after UV/H₂O₂ oxidation and GAC filtration. Pre-treated surface water from three locations was treated with UV/H₂O₂ with medium pressure (MP) lamps and passed through granulated activated carbon (GAC). Samples taken before and...

Assessing and improving SCADA security in the Dutch drinking water sector

International studies have shown that information security for process control systems, in particular SCADA, is weak. Many of the critical infrastructure (CI) services critically depend on process control systems. Therefore, any vulnerability in the protection of process control systems in CI may result in serious consequences for citizens and...

Nanotechnologies, engineered nanomaterials and occupational health and safety - A review

The significance of engineered nanomaterials (ENM) and nanotechnologies grows rapidly. Nanotechnology applications may have a positive marked impact on many aspects of on human every day life, for example by providing means for the production of clean energy and pure drinking water. Hundreds of consumer nano-based products are already on the...

Acoustic monitoring of terrorist intrusion in a drinking water network

In collaboration with Kiwa Water Research, TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research) has investigated the possibilities to detect and classify aberrant sounds in water networks, using acoustic sensors. Amongst the sources of such sounds are pumps, drills, mechanical impacts, which could indicate, for instance, a terrorist's...

Using a groundwater quality negotiation support system to change land-use management near a drinking-water abstraction in the Netherlands

A negotiation support system (NSS) was developed to solve groundwater conflicts that arose during land-use management. It was set up in cooperation with the stakeholders involved to provide information on the impact of land use, e.g., agriculture, nature (forested areas), recreation, and urban areas, on the quality of both infiltrating and...

Estimation of the consumption of cold tap water for microbiological risk assessment: An overview of studies and statistical analysis of data

The volume of cold tap water consumed is an essential element in quantitative microbial risk assessment. This paper presents a review of tap water consumption studies. Study designs were evaluated and statistical distributions were fitted to water consumption data from The Netherlands, Great Britain, Germany and Australia. We conclude that the...

Risks to health and environment of the use of lead in products in the EU

The EU Commission's Services asked TNO and CML to perform a study into the risks of the present uses of lead over time, as an input to a discussion on the need of a further reduction of the use of this material. The study was set up as a substance flow analysis to analyse trends in uses and emissions of lead in Europe between 2000 and 2030. The...

International issues on human health effects of exposure to chemical mixtures

In this article, we highlight new developments and recent studies concerning adverse human health effects related to chemical mixtures. One group of activities comprises the development of a new computer program for analyzing mixture studies and a mathematical model as a basis for combination rules that predict the toxicity of mixtures. Other...

Mixtures and interactions

Drinking water can be considered as a complex mixture that consists of tens, hundreds or thousands of chemicals of which the composition is qualitatively and quantitatively not fully known. From a public health point of view it is most relevant to answer the question of whether chemicals in drinking water interact in a way that results in an...

Nitrite accumulation in an attapulgas clay biofilm reactor by fulvic acids

As a result of seriously polluted raw water sources, some water- treatment plants in China are intending to apply the biofilm process as a pretreatment prior to the traditional drinking water-treatment systems. These polluted raw waters contain higher total organic matter and ammonium than unpolluted waters. It has been reported that synthetic...

Does the risk of childhood diabetes mellitus require revision of the guideline values for nitrate in drinking water?

In recent years, several studies have addressed a possible relationship between nitrate exposure and childhood type 1 insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. The present ecologic study describes a possible relation between the incidence of type 1 diabetes and nitrate levels in drinking water in The Netherlands, and evaluates whether the World...

Intake of nitrate and nitrite and the risk of gastric cancer: A prospective cohort study

The association between the intake of nitrate or nitrite and gastric cancer risk was investigated in a prospective cohort study started in 1986 in the Netherlands, of 120,852 men and women aged 55-69 years. At baseline, data on dietary intake, smoking habits and other covariates were collected by means of a self-administered questionnaire. For...

Nitrate intake and gastric cancer risk: Results from the Netherlands cohort study