Understanding Chemical and Microbial Contaminants in Drinking Water:
Raw, Treated, and Tap Water

Date: Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Time: 1:00 to 2:30 PM (eastern)

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This webinar will cover the spectrum of chemical and microbial contaminants in raw (source) water, to treated water, to water at the tap. The webinar will be presented in three segments to address key issues and questions of drinking water quality. The segments include:

• Groundwater Sources—The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is assessing groundwater quality in principal aquifers that are important sources of drinking water and comparing constituent concentrations in raw (untreated) groundwater to human-health benchmarks established for drinking-water quality. Findings on the occurrence of organic and inorganic constituents, including radioisotopes, from 11 principal aquifers across the United States will be summarized. (presented by Bruce Lindsey, ~15 minutes)
  
• Water Quality from Source Through Treatment—The U.S Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Office of Research and Development and the USGS joined efforts to broaden the scope of existing public drinking water information by providing a nationally consistent and rigorously quality-assured dataset on a wide range of chemical and microbial contaminants present in source and treated waters. The two agencies analyzed water samples for 233 chemical and 14 microbial contaminants in source (untreated, raw) and treated drinking waters from 29 drinking water treatment plants. The results of this collaborative effort, published in 2017 as a series of eight papers, will be summarized, as will a follow-on research publication that applied knowledge gained from this study to better understand the potential for de facto water reuse by drinking water utilities. The importance of collaboration between Federal agencies and drinking-water utilities to the success of these studies will be examined through the experience of a participating utility. (Presented by Ed Furlong, Susan Glassmeyer, and John Sullivan, ~30 minutes)

• Water Quality from Distribution to the Consumer—The USGS and collaborators recently began efforts to quantify tap water exposure pathways in public and private water supplies. Future plans and preliminary results of pilot efforts from several homes and offices to collect representative tap water samples for analyses of chemical and microbial contaminant mixtures, bioassays, and site-specific exposure activities based on USEPA ToxCast effects data will be presented. (Presented by Paul Bradley, ~15 minutes)

Speakers:

• Bruce Lindsey (USGS)
• Ed Furlong (USGS, presenting), Dana Kolpin (USGS, participating)
• John Sullivan, Treatment Chemist, Town of Billerica, Department of Public Works, Water
• Susan Glassmeyer, Office of Research and Development, National Exposure Research Laboratory, USEPA
• Paul Bradley (USGS)