{"id":17072,"date":"2017-07-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-hakamagwp.pantheonsite.io\/news\/sewage-rehab"},"modified":"2017-10-26T22:16:28","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T22:16:28","slug":"sewage-rehab","status":"publish","type":"custom_news","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/news\/sewage-rehab\/","title":{"rendered":"Sewage Rehab"},"content":{"rendered":"

Compounds that mimic or disrupt human hormones are showing up in freshwater ecosystems worldwide. This widespread pollution<\/a> is causing the feminization of fish<\/a> and amphibians<\/a>, as well as the disruption of natural freshwater microbial communities<\/a>. It\u2019s even making fish anxious.<\/a> For people, living near to such polluted waterways is associated with an elevated risk of some cancers<\/a>. The presence of hormones and hormone disruptors is not a new problem, but it\u2019s one that waste treatment experts have been struggling to solve. These compounds sneak through many conventional wastewater treatment systems<\/a>. But they don\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n

Terrence J. Collins<\/a> has been working for decades on a technology to solve this pollution problem. Collins, a chemist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has engineered enzymes that emulate those in the human liver<\/a>. If used alongside traditional water treatment, these enzymes break down the harmful chemicals\u2014including drugs\u2014that are otherwise missed. But here\u2019s the thing: Collins developed and patented this technology, tetra-amido macrocyclic ligand (TAML) activators, nearly 30 years ago, long before worries about hormones in the water entered the public consciousness. He\u2019s honed the technology ever since, making it more effective than ever. No municipalities have bought into the technology yet, but it has been a runner-up for pilot programs in Europe and there is hope that a US-based program will be in the works soon.<\/p>\n

In 1992, Collins successfully created his first water treatment enzymes. But support from the mainstream chemistry community studying wastewater treatment has been almost nonexistent, he says. The chemist suspects the lack of enthusiasm is for ideological\u2014rather than technological\u2014reasons. Collins is a green chemist.<\/p>\n

Green chemistry,<\/a> as a concept, was developed in part by John Peterson Myers, an academic and coauthor of the 1996 book Our Stolen Future<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> which is about endocrine disruptors and toxicant pollution in the urban environment. Green chemists focus on developing new chemicals and chemical processes that are Earth-friendly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe traditional chemical lobby opposes this kind of work, and universities are afraid to embrace this new way of thinking about chemistry because they fear their funding will be cut off from the chemical lobby,\u201d Collins says, adding that it\u2019s been very difficult for him to find academic funding for his research.<\/p>\n

Industry insiders say one reason green chemistry has progressed in only fits and starts is that people are skeptical of a new technology that sounds too good to be true. Sean Palmer, a biomedical engineer and decontamination specialist in the United Kingdom, says he has long had trouble convincing others that Collins\u2019s novel technology is highly effective.<\/p>\n

\u201cI talk to wastewater treatment plant managers about TAML, and even show them live demos of the technology, and it seems like they can\u2019t wrap their heads around the fact that it really works, and that it works better, faster, more safely, and more cheaply than what\u2019s out there right now,\u201d Palmer says. TAML activators are green chemicals, producing no hazardous byproducts.<\/p>\n

When combined with hydrogen peroxide, TAML activators act like liver enzymes, sparking chemical reactions that break down artificial hormones, pharmaceuticals, and illicit drugs into benign compounds, such as water and carbon dioxide.<\/p>\n

TAML activators can\u2019t do everything, but neither can existing wastewater treatment technologies, Collins says. None can break down fluorinated compounds such as perfluorooctanoic acid, used to make Teflon; the common pesticide metaldehyde; or heavy metals.<\/p>\n

Other wastewater treatment technologies do exist, some of which can help reduce the quantity of hormones and drugs that slip through processing. Two technologies\u2014ozone and activated carbon\u2014are in common use, and there are other experimental techniques in development. But TAML activators require less energy to run and are cheaper than these other treatments.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks like TAML has a lot of promise,\u201d says Anne McElroy, an aquatic toxicologist at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York. She supports use of green chemicals as a replacement for many hazardous chemicals to benefit human and environmental health, but says TAML may not be the silver bullet Collins suggests.<\/p>\n

\u201cCollins needs to tread carefully,\u201d says McElroy. \u201cHe needs to ensure these catalysts are monitored for their toxicity, so they actually do not cause more harm to the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

But after a 30-year struggle to solve what\u2019s been an intractable sewage problem for communities around the globe, Collins is more than ready for the technology to prove itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After decades of work, green chemistry may be the answer to polluted sewage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12843,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"acf":{"hero_video_url":null,"hero_video_caption":"","deck":"After decades of work, green chemistry may be the answer to polluted sewage.","authors_group":[{"by_group":"by","contributors_group":[15527]}],"word_count_override":"","podbean1":"","podbean2":"","redirect":"","geolocation":null,"related":[17137,17135],"twitterimage":14381,"facebookimage":13880,"twitterdescription":"","edited":"","factchecked":"","code":"","no_old_story_flag":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/17072"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/custom_news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/17072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19924,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/17072\/revisions\/19924"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/17135"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/17137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}