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Unintentional, indirect wastewater reuse is occurring as upstream wastewater treatmentplant discharges impact downstream drinking water treatment plants. The anticonvulsantpharmaceutical primidone was measured because it is considered to be a conservative tracer ofwastewater influences in drinking-water supplies (i.e., stable in the environment and notnaturally occurring). Primidone in the wastewater treatment plant effluents, whose plants didnot use reverse osmosis membranes, was typically present at ~100-200 ng/L levels. At thereverse osmosis plants, primidone was not detected. Based on primidone and/or flow data,drinking-water supplies that had 50-percent wastewater contributions were classified aseffluent-dominated. For drinking-water supplies that had 10-50 or 10-percent wastewater, theywere classified as effluent-impacted or low impact, respectively. During low-flow conditions inthe rivers studied, wastewater effluents had a larger impact. However, primidone was notdetected at drinking water treatment plant influents that were on very large lakes or rivers inwhich the primidone from upstream wastewater treatment plants was diluted below the minimumreporting level (i.e., 8 ng/L). At monitoring wells in basins recharged with treated wastewater,soil aquifer treatment removed a significant portion of the dissolved organic carbon in thewastewater treatment plant effluent, whereas the concentration of primidone was relativelyconservative. The concentration of primidone was found to be a good indicator of wastewatercontributions to river flow or groundwater recharge. Includes 10 references, tables, figures.

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Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 11/01/2006 Number of Pages: 18File Size: 1 file , 550 KB