Author Archive

Beach sand – key player in coastal beach water management

Beach sand – not just for sunbathers

After hearing the word “beach”, many people automatically think of sunbathing, long walks near the sea, building sand castles and throwing Frisbees – recreation at its finest. Beaches are one of the most visited ecosystems for human recreation and are of high importance for regional economies, in many cases especially for tourism. Beaches and recreational bathing waters are highlighted by the World Health Organization (WHO) as important for health and wellbeing. But did you know that beaches, and in particular the beach sand itself, also plays a vital part in coastal beach water management?

Worldwide public use of water for recreational purposes and recreational activities that involves water have increased over the years. But this also means that recreational exposure to pathogens in the water environment also increases.

Fecal contamination of coastal waters

There are many different kinds of contaminants that humans can be exposed to with regard to water, such as protozoas and trematodas, bacterias and viruses. Current recreational water management practices tend to focus primarily on the beach water itself, excluding the impacts of beach sand on water quality. A wider approach is needed to fully understand how other components of the beach system can influence the water quality.

New research by Qian Zhang, Xia He and Tao Yan, from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, studied what role beach sand has in coastal beach water management.

Beach sand is often highlighted for its negative impact because it functions as a potential source and reservoir to fecal indicator bacteria, often showing higher levels than the surrounding water. This could cause chronic water quality deterioration and hamper proper health risk assessment. However, to get full knowledge of the beach system, we also need to understand the positive impacts that beach sand can have on water quality.

By using microcosms, small experimental and simplified ecosystems, Zhang and colleagues have examined how subtidal beach sand can enhance the decay of fecal bacteria and which underlying mechanisms contribute to the process.

Indigenous microbiota – a significant factor in bacterial decay

The study identified that beach sand indigenous microbiota was the major factor in bacterial decay rates, and showed that higher indigenous microbiota corresponded to faster bacterial decay. This research proved that beach sand actively facilitates the removal of fecal bacteria, which goes beyond the traditional perception of beach sand only serving for contaminant adsorption and retention.

The study shows that beach sand have other functions than just being for recreation, it also contributes significantly to water quality. Thanks to the research findings from Zhang and colleagues, beach water management practices can be improved to include beach sand and other functions of natural processes in beach systems, which would be a more inclusive systems approach. This would also enhance our understanding and management of recreational exposure to pathogens in water.



You can read the full paper for free* using the link below:

Impact of indigenous microbiota of subtidal sand on fecal indicator bacteria decay in beach systems: a microcosm study
Qian Zhang, Xia He and Tao Yan.
Environ. Sci: Water Res. Technol., 2015, 1, 306-315.
DOI: 10.1039/c5ew00004a

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About the webwriter

Jesper Agrelius is a MSc student in Environmental Science at Linköping University, Sweden. His main interests regards environmental science, especially climate change and biogeochemistry. You can follow him on Twitter @JesperAgrelius.

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*Access is free through a registered RSC account.

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Disinfection by-products during ballast water treatment

Maritime transportation is vital for local and global economies and international trade, but it also causes many environmental problems.

Ballast water – safe and efficient, but also harmful

Water has been used as ballast to stabilize ships since the introduction of steel vessels during the last centuries. Ballast water provides stability and manoeuvrability and also compensates for weight changes in cargo loads, fuel and water consumption, among others. Ballast water is crucial for efficient and safe shipping operations, however it also has environmental downsides.

A reason for concern

The transportation of invasive species via ballast water is a serious ecological threat and have received a lot of focus during recent years. There is an International convention for the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast water and sediment (BWM) that was adopted 2004, which promotes procedures and standards to control and manage the ballast water.

Ballast water management technologies is seen as a key factor in combating ecological and health risks of ballast water. There are several ways to treat ballast water, either mechanical, physical or chemical methods, or in combination. These treatment methods are seen as a response to the ecological threat of invasive species, but the methods themselves also come with certain environmental risks. Chemical treatment of ballast water can result in formation of disinfection by-products, which are thought to have an impact on health.

Formation of disinfection by-products in ballast water treatment
New research by Amisha Shah and colleagues have observed the extent of disinfection by-products (DBP) formation during chemical treatment of ballast water. Chlorine, ozone, peracetic acid (PAA) and chlorine dioxide, predominantly used in ballast water management systems in this order from the former to the later, where used to examine and assess DBP formation in several ballast water types such as seawaters, brackish waters, synthetic- and man-made freshwater. Our knowledge of the potential formation of DBP in saline water is limited and therefore is it important to conduct this type of studies, since many ballast waters often are saline.

Ballast water – hitch-hiking invasive species. Source: http://globallast.imo.org/

Studied DBPs include trihalomethanes (THMs), bromate, and haloacetic acids (HAAs). Approximately 50% of the formation of DBPs occurred within 24 hours of the usual 5 day ballast water treatment holding time. The findings highlight that our understanding of DBP formation in freshwater systems can be partially transferred to saline waters.

The research show several factors that influence DBP formation in saline waters: salinity, dissolved organic matter (DOM) type/concentration, oxidant type/dose and temperature. Particularly salinity seems to influence the bromide concentration and brominated DBPs dominated in high bromide-containing waters. Temperature shows diverse and limited influence on DBP formation: TBAA and CHBr3 formation was not affected by temperature, whereas DBAA and bromide formation decreased following a disminution in temperature.

Thanks to this study, important factors in DBP formation have been examined so ballast water treatment disinfection strategies can be optimized to limit DBP formation and discharge in our waters – one of many steps towards a sustainable transport system.

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You can read the full paper for free* using the link below:

Formation of disinfection by-products during ballast water treatment with ozone, chlorine, and peracetic acid: influence of water quality parameters
Amisha D. Shah, Zheng-Qian Liu, Elisabeth Salhi, Thomas Höfer, Barbara Werschkund and Urs von Gunten
Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol., 2015, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C5EW00061K

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About the webwriter

Jesper Agrelius is a MSc student in Environmental Science at Linköping University, Sweden. His main interests regards environmental science, especially climate change and biogeochemistry. You can follow him on @JesperAgrelius.

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*Access is free through a registered RSC account.

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2nd National Environmental Eco-Toxicology Conference

The 2nd National Environmental Eco-Toxicology Conference was held in Xiamen, China, 25th-28th of April, 2015.

This exciting conference was jointly organised by the Research Center for Eco-environmental Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Xiamen University and the Institute of Urban Environment of CAS.

More than 700 attendees shared new ideas and recent development on the are six topics discussed during this conference:

  • Screening and assessment of high risk chemical contaminants
  • Transfer and distribution of chemical contaminants in the environment and organisms
  • Chemical hazards evaluation
  • Toxicology mechanism of chemical ecology
  • Toxicological mechanism of chemical health effects
  • Chemical risk management


During the conference, the Environmental Science (ES) series of journals sponsored three poster prizes. Let’s introduce the winners!

ES: Processes & Impacts: ‘Study on the toxicity behavior of organic phosphate ester flame retardant to pattern fish’, by Liwei Sun (Zhejiang Institute of Technology)

ES: Water Research & Technology: ‘Bioaccumulation behaviour of short chain chlorinated paraffins in Antarctic ecosystem’, by Huijuan Li and Aiqian Zhang (Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences)

ES: Nano: ‘Proinflammatory effects of silver nanoparticles and silver ions on human skin keratinocytes’, by Yang Di, Wei Hong-ying, Wang Bin, Fan Jing-pu, Qin Yu, Liu Yue, Guo Xin-biao and Deng Fu-rong (Peking Universty)

Congratulations to all the winners!

The judges of the prize thought the quality of the posters was really high and, from the Environmental Science team, we would like to thank all the researchers that attended or presented at the conference.

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Meet our Advisory Board

We are incredibly proud to present our Advisory Board, a group of distinguished experts in the field of water research and technology, who will provide us with valuable external perspectives on our current plans and strategy, and will actively help us shape the future of the journal.

Let’s find out a bit more about them:

Nandita Basu
University of Waterloo, Canada

Nandita is an Assistant Professor of Water Sustainability and Ecohydrology at the University of Waterloo, in Canada. Her research revolves around an interest in the sustainable management of water resources. The question of sustainable management of water is inherently interdisciplinary and requires research at the interfaces of hydrology, biogeochemistry, ecology, social sciences and economics. Her expertise lies at the interface of hydrology and chemistry, but she is also actively involved in collaborations with ecologists, social scientists and economists to explore other interfaces.


Dionysios Dionysiou
University of Cincinnati, USA

Professor Dionysiou is a UNESCO Chair Professor on “Water Access and Sustainability” and a Herman Schneider Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Cincinnati where he teaches courses on drinking water quality and treatment, advanced unit operations for water treatment, advanced oxidation technologies, and physical-chemical processes for water quality control. His research interests include treatment of water contaminated by harmful algal blooms with conventional and advanced technologies, advanced technologies for water treatment, advanced oxidation technologies, transition metal-based chemical oxidation, and nanotechnology.

Ferdi L. Hellweger
Northeastern University, USA

Dr. Hellweger is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University. His research interests are in the ecology of microbes in surface water systems, including harmful algal blooms in lakes and antibiotic resistance in rivers. He specialises in the development and application of mathematical models, with a focus on agent-based techniques. Locally, he is especially interested in the Charles River and wants to contribute to making it swimmable again. His goal is to build a forecast system that can be used to predict when & where it is safe to swim.


Jun Ma
Harbin Institute of Technology, China

Professor Ma is the Changjiang Scholar Professor at Harbin Institute of Technology and the Deputy Director of the National Engineering Research Center of Urban Water Resources, China. Jun’s interest has been in the area of water and wastewater treatment, he has been working in the processes of oxidation, nanoparticles and membranes.  He is the recipient of China Young Scientist Award, and the Achievement Award of Chiangjiang Scholars (Engineering Science Award) and holds over 80 invention patents and over 180 peer reviewed international journal papers.


Julie Minton
WateReuse Foundation, USA

Julie Minton has been the Director of Research Programs for the WateReuse Research Foundation for nearly five years and previously worked at the Foundation managing research projects.  She is responsible for planning and managing a comprehensive research program and staff.  Collectively, they manage over 50 active projects, worth more than $6 million annually. Ms. Minton has the programmatic responsibility for the Foundation’s fundraising initiatives, federal grants and cooperative agreements and has directed programmatic monitoring, reporting, outputs, and outcomes on multiple federal, state, and partner awards totaling over $20 million. Ms. Minton is also responsible for maintaining collaborative relationships with U.S. and international research organizations, cooperative funding of research programs and projects, and joint outreach activities. She has a B.A. in Biology from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.


Simon Parsons
Scottish Water, UK

Simon Parsons is Director of Strategic Customer Service Planning at Scottish Water. He was formerly Chief Scientist and General Manager of Scientific Services and represented Scottish Water in science, research and public health communities. Simon won the Royal Society of Chemistry’s prestigious Sustainable Water Award for 2014 for advancing the understanding of natural organic matter in water treatment and for the development of treatment processes to improve water quality and sustainability.


Kai Udert
EAWAG, Switzerland

Dr. Udert has a background in environmental engineering. He received his PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich in 2003. After a postdoctoral appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he joined the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) in 2006. His main research focus has been on decentralized wastewater treatment and source separation. Besides working as a researcher, Dr Udert is also a lecturer at ETH Zurich for process engineering in water and wastewater treatment.


Lizhong Zhu
Zhejiang University, China

Lizhong Zhu is a Professor in Environmental Science and Director of Faculty of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. His research mainly focuses on interfacial behavior of organic pollutants and its regulation technology, which are essential to understanding source-sink dynamics, predicting bioavailability, and developing new pollution control materials and methods.


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All in all, a team of leaders in water research who are happy to join us in our great adventure.

Do you want to know more about the latest news in the journal? Follow us on Twitter @ESWater_RSC!

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Let’s dip our toes into water (footprint)

“Think you need 8 glasses of water a day? Think again.” reads an infographic on The Nature Conservancy website. All the things we consume – the food in our pantries, the clothes in our closets, the appliances in our homes and the gadgets in our pockets – have gallons of embodied water in them.

Save water by turning off lights and unplugging unused chargers

The average light bulb consumes 1.4 gallons of water per hour (Last Call at the Oasis). “Water is needed for energy production and energy is needed for water supply.” say Mekonnen et al. in their recent paper on the consumptive water footprint (WF) of electricity and heat. The consumptive WF of electricity, expressed as the total volume of water consumed over the supply chain, per unit of gross electricity produced, primarily depends on the energy source.”

Water and energy are intimately interlinked

Recent research shows that the energy can also be produced during water treatment [1,2,3,4]. At the same time, reducing our energy consumption would also reduce our water footprint. But how much would our reduced energy consumption absolve us of our environmental sins depends on what keeps our lights on – fossil fuels, solar energy, hydroelectricity, wind energy or biofuels.

How green is renewable energy?

Renewable energy sources such as solar and hydropower are often promoted as low-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels. But Mekonnen et al. deliver some sobering news: The WF of solar energy from CSP [concentrated solar power] is in the same order of magnitude as the WF of electricity from fossil fuels and nuclear energy, because of the need for cooling.” What does this say about massive fields of solar panels in deserts and other water stressed areas?

Wendy Wilson, Executive Director of Advocates for the West has said, “[E]ach day, enough water to meet the demands of more than 50 million people evaporates from reservoirs behind hydroelectric dams.” So what is the carbon footprint of water?

Rethinking green

Buying green and installing solar panels on our rooftops may give us the warm fuzzies, but we need to reassess what we mean by ‘green’. Of course, a single metric (such as carbon footprint or water footprint) cannot capture the complexity of the life cycle impacts of a product or a process. We need an array of complementary metrics and life cycle assessment to analyse the sustainability of renewable energy [5]. Nonetheless, Mekonnen et al. have provided ample fodder for us to chew on and think about the intertwined challenges of sustainable energy and water.

What is your water footprint?

Find out by using this personal water footprint calculator and the statistics and infographics developed by the Water Footprint Network.

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You can read the full paper for free* using the link below:

The consumptive water footprint of electricity and heat: a global assessment
Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol., 2015, Advance Article
Mesfin M. Mekonnen, P. W. Gerbens-Leenes and Arjen Y. Hoekstra
DOI: 10.1039/C5EW00026B

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About the webwriter

Paramjeet Pati is a PhD Candidate at the Virginia Tech Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology (@VTSuN).
You can find more articles by him in the VTSuN blog, where he writes using the name
coffeemug.

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*Access is free through a registered RSC account.

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A deep dive into shame: Our sanitation woes

The top three everyday things that still amaze me after several years of living in the developed world are 1) safe-to-drink water in the tap, 2) near-ubiquitous wireless internet, and 3) microwaveable meals. The next everyday miracle on my list would be public restrooms (or washrooms/ lavatories/ toilets, depending on which city in the developed world you are exploring).

Can’t hang up when nature calls: Let’s take a moment to appreciate that we get to go when we need to go. That the answer to our question, “Excuse me, where’s the restroom?” is usually “That way.”, instead of a potentially terrifying “What’s a restroom?”.

We see our roads, railways, bridges and dams, but the sanitation infrastructure in our “flushed and plumbed world” is quietly tucked away underground, out of sight and out of mind. We are, however, reminded how much we depend on it when we are stuck behind a long queue in front of a porta potty, or when an uncooperative toilet refuses to flush, or rebels by regurgitating its long-forgotten contents.

An “urgent, shameful issue”
Readers of the British Medical Journal chose the ‘sanitary revolution’ as the greatest medical advancement since 1840, rating it above antibiotics and anaesthesia. Despite our phenomenal scientific progress, economic growth and improved living standards in the modern world, nearly 2.5 billion people worldwide lack access to adequate sanitation, which Rose George, in her brilliant TED talk, called an “urgent, shameful issue”.

Nearly 1800 children under the age of five die every day from diarrhoeal diseases due to lack of clean water, sanitation and hygiene. “If 90 school buses filled with kindergartners were to crash every day, with no survivors, the world would take notice. But this is precisely what happens every single day because of poor water, sanitation and hygiene.”, said Sanjay Wijesekera, the Chief of Section for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at UNICEF. Improved sanitation can decrease the occurrence of diarrhoeal diseases and reduce diarrhoea-related deaths by 37.5%.

Beyond the ick factor
Sanitation seldom features in polite dinner table conversations. But we need to bring this unmentionable topic into our collective public consciousness. And it goes beyond the direct health impacts. In a recent paper on the challenges related to sanitation, Dr. Michael Templeton said, “Health is not the only intended outcome of improved sanitation, with other objectives including ensuring personal dignity, safety, and a cleaner environment.”

Today, even developed nations face challenges to adequate sanitation. The aging sanitation infrastructures in our cities are vulnerable to financial as well and natural disasters.

Improved sanitation will require not only technological innovations, but also behavioural changes through community-led campaigns and policy innovations.  Which leads to many intriguing questions: What is Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach? Why do well-intentioned, but narrowly focused funding programmes for sanitation interventions fail? What are the economic paybacks from improved sanitation?

Here, take my hand – let’s wade through the muck, take a deep breath, and plunge headfirst into these urgent, smelly, and icky topics by reading the full article for free*. In the end, we will come out smelling like roses.

Pitfalls and progress: a perspective on achieving sustainable sanitation for all
Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol.
, 2015, 1, 17-21
DOI: 10.1039/C4EW00087K

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About the webwriter

Paramjeet Pati is a PhD Candidate at the Virginia Tech Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology (@VTSuN).
You can find more articles by him in the VTSuN blog, where he writes using the name
coffeemug.

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*Access is free through a registered RSC account.

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Sanitation Themed Collection

The Editorial Board of Environmental Science: Water Research and Technology is encouraging submissions in the area of sanitation research.


Accepted articles on this topic will be gathered in an online themed collection to be highlighted on the journal website. Submissions on research in the following areas are welcome:

  • Novel onsite sanitation technologies
  • Sanitation solutions for areas with high water tables
  • Sanitation for emergency relief situations
  • Faecal sludge properties, emptying methods, and treatment
  • Biogas recovery technologies at household or small community scales
  • Sanitation service models
  • The role of sanitation in improving health
  • Cost-benefit and sustainability assessments of sanitation options
  • Simplified sewerage and drainage
  • Urban sanitation challenges and large-scale solutions
  • We welcome original research articles, communications and review papers on these topics.


    Submit your paper by 31st December 2015!

    Prospective authors may wish to read Pitfalls and Progress: A Perspective on Achieving Sustainable Sanitation for All*’ by Dr Michael R. Templeton of Imperial College London and an Editorial Board member, which was published in the first issue of the journal.

    There are many benefits to publishing with us, including wide exposure to your publication, as all content published during 2015 & 2016 is free* to access.

    For more information on our scope and author guidelines, please visit our website or email us at eswater-rsc@rsc.org.


    ESWRT Banner

    *Access is free through an RSC registered account.

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    Our first Editorial Board Meeting!

    Issue 1The first Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology Board Meeting was hosted in Chicago last week and it was an absolute success, with an astonishing 100% of attendance. It was an incredibly busy day, full of development ideas, plans for exciting new projects and long term vision plans.

    We aspire to be the premier journal in the area of water resource management for the built environment, and our team is working enthusiastically to achieve this goal. To that end, we have assembled a tremendous group of respected global leaders in the area of water research and technology for our editorial board and associate editors.

    There are also several practical advantages to submitting to Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology: we have no page or word restrictions, fast publication (< 90 days), colour figures are free, and if accepted, our team in Cambridge will work tirelessly to promote your work through social media and our blogs. But this is not all, please see the full list of benefits!

    “Although Issue 1 was only recently published, we believe it is the start of something incredibly special.”

    David Cwiertny, Editor-in-Chief

    Editorial Board Meeting

    We sincerely hope you will join us in this great new adventure!

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    First issue is now available!

    ESWRT Cake

    Last week, we were tremendously excited to announce the publication of our first issue of Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology. This inaugural issue was introduced by David M. Cwiertny, Editor-in-Chief of the journal.

    In his editorial ‘To new beginnings and a better alternative’, he stated our strong commitment to grow a footprint in the water and environmental research.

    The launch of this journal would not have been possible without an incredibly professional and capable Editorial Board. Therefore, we included a Profile article with mini-biographies so you can meet them and read more about their background.

    Cake cutting

    This issue contained three HOT articles which obtained particularly high scores during peer review.

    In the first of them, researchers from the Manchester Metropolitan University discussed the quantification of corrosion inhibitors used in the water industry for steam condensate treatment.

    The second article was brought to us by Michael Templeton, who wrote an insightful perspective on achieving sustainable sanitation for all.

    And last but not least, the group of Zhiyong Jason Ren presented a research on microbial capacitive desalination and energy production from unconventional natural gas produced water in our third HOT article.

    In our office in Cambridge, this special event called for some celebration and we enjoyed an incredible cake with the cover of this first issue.

    We hope you enjoy reading Issue 1 as much as we did. We are now relentlessly working on our next ones to keep up the incredible high standards set up in the inaugural issue. Be ready!

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    Read our first issue:
    01 January 2015, Issue 1,  Page 1 to 122
    Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology
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    Energy-water-food nexus: “All the pieces matter”

    As far as technical reports go, the Soggy Lettuce Report (2004) is as delightful a name as any. According to the report: “More money is wasted on food each year [in the United Kingdom] than any other category of goods and services – a whopping ₤424 per person.” But money isn’t the only loss – gone with the wasted soggy lettuce are its embodied energy and water.

    The Nexus: Energy, water and food are inextricably intertwined. In a recent forum, Machell et al. discuss the interdependencies between the three (also called the Energy-Food-Water Nexus). “Food production consumes both water and energy in order to grow, harvest, clean and prepare food.” (Machell et al.) Water and energy are interdependent too. Water is indispensable for every phase of energy production. Steam generation for electricity, extraction of fossil fuels, and cultivation of biofuel crops – all of these depend on water. On the other hand, it takes energy to treat and distribute water for human use.Energy-Water-Food Nexus

    So, letting food go to waste means we are also wasting water. Leaving a faucet running unnecessarily wastes not only water, but also the energy it took to extract, treat and send the water to that faucet. By leaving the lights on or letting an idling car needlessly guzzle fuel (petrol, diesel, and yes, even electricity), we are wasting energy that could have been used to clean water or grow food.

    Policy implications: It is important that we develop future policies using the nexus perspective. “…[C]auses that might upset the nexus balance are increasingly requiring global solutions and there is a great need for joined-up activities between stakeholders to mitigate future resource conflicts.” (Machell et al.)

    A deeper understanding of this nexus balance will help us change our perceptions and consumption patterns. That soggy lettuce that we throw away has far-reaching environmental implications as well as opportunities for energy recovery [1,2,3]. International trade [4], climate and water policies [5], renewable energy [6,7], and wastewater treatment [8] have interlinked environmental and social impacts [9] that can be identified only through comprehensive nexus analysis. As mentioned in the article, “The complex relationships in the water energy food nexus, require informed production and consumption decisions for the near future that can mitigate negative impacts on risk, security, and the environment.”

    The Wire had it right: The interdependencies between energy, water and food cannot be compartmentalized and studied in isolation. Detective Lester Freamon said it best: “All the pieces matter.”

    Find out how by reading the full article for free*:

    The water energy food nexus – challenges and emerging solutions
    Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol., 2015, 1, 15-16
    DOI: 10.1039/C4EW90001D

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    About the webwriter

    Paramjeet Pati is a PhD Candidate at the Virginia Tech Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology (@VTSuN).
    You can find more articles by him in the VTSuN blog, where he writes using the name
    coffeemug.

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    *Access is free through a registered RSC account.

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