University of South Australia Media Release
Water scientists from Australia and China have proposed a more effective method of removing organic pesticides from drinking water, reducing the risk of contamination and potential health problems.
A 62% rise in global pesticide use in the past 20 years has escalated fears that many of these chemicals could end up in our waterways, causing cancer.
Powdered activated carbon (PAC) is currently used to remove organic pesticides from drinking water, but the process is costly, time consuming and not 100% effective.
University of South Australia water researcher Professor Jinming Duan has collaborated with his former PhD student, Dr Wei Li of Xi’an University of Architecture & Technology and Chinese colleagues in a series of experiments to improve the process.
The researchers found that reducing the PAC particles from the existing commercial size of 38 μm (one millionth of a metre) to 6 μm, up to 75% less powder was needed to remove six common pesticides, achieving significant water treatment savings.
At 6 μm, the PAC particles are still large enough to be filtered out after the adsorption process, ensuring they do not end up in the drinking water after toxic pesticides are removed.
Prof Duan says pollutants in our waterways are projected to increase in coming decades as the world’s population and industrial development grows.
“It’s therefore critical that we develop cost-effective treatment processes to ensure our waterways remain safe,” he says.
Their findings have been published in the journal Chemosphere.
“Pesticides cannot be removed using conventional water treatment processes such as flocculation, sedimentation and filtration. Powdered activated carbon does the job, but the existing methods have limitations. Our study has identified how we can make this process more efficient.”
Approximately 3.54 million metric tons of pesticides were applied to agricultural crops worldwide in 2021, according to the Statista Research Department.
Worryingly, despite efforts to increase their efficiency, it is estimated that only 10% of pesticides reach their target pests, with most of the chemicals remaining on plant surfaces or entering the environment, including the soil, waterways and atmosphere.
Toxicological studies have suggested that long-term exposure to low levels of pesticides – primarily through diet or drinking water – could increase the risks of cancer and other diseases.
“This is why it is important to reduce their levels to as low as feasibly possible,” Prof Duan says.
The researchers also hope to explore how super-fine activated carbon could be used to remove toxic polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) found in many consumer products, which have been linked to adverse health impacts.
“The effectiveness and feasibility of ball-milled powdered activated carbon (BPAC) for removal of organic pesticides in conventional drinking water treatment process” is published in Chemosphere. DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2024.142229
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I imagine most people want to drink clean water, not toxic pesticides or nano-particles of plastic.
Now this tech might work but at what scale, drinking water only?
What about the rest of the planet, the rivers and oceans?
Might it be a better idea to see if the prevailing farm mono-culture/pesticide nexus, which has necessitated this tech-fix, has a better alternative?
From what I read there is a better way, namely, regenerative agriculture.
Those 2 words will no doubt burn the ears of the likes of Bill Gates and his backers in Big Ag.
Think about all the money tied up in selling pesticides, what a waste, a poisonous legacy for the planet.
My hope is one day, enough individuals will wake up to what’s happening and tell those who want you sick from poor farm management techniques to ‘Get lost’. Give us back nature, stick your artifical chemicals.
Meanwhile, according to Professor Ian Wright, Sydney’s drinking water is receiving high amounts of inadequately treated sewerage from Council treatment plants because the Environment Protection Authority licencing permits it. See https://au.news.yahoo.com/council-discharges-treated-sewage-into-sick-aussie-river-that-feeds-citys-water-supply-020011053.html
Is another cryptosporidium crisis looming?
Pesticides usage skyrockets! 3.54 million metric tonnes globally in 2024! If that doesn’t scare the pants off any sentient and awake human, I don’t know what would.
Having worked in the agricultural sector at both levels, blue & white collar, I’ve heard plenty of horror stories and seen the impacts of the industrial agrochemical approach to monocultural production of food & fibre, and it ain’t pretty.
Food & fibre production in the last ~150 years has had an appalling impact on the natural world, with direct impact on plant, animal & insect species that have become collateral victims of the success of agrochemical companies in distributing their products – herbicides, pesticides & fungicides – across all agricultural & horticultural sectors, along with the fertiliser supply side of the equation which by virtue of acidifying soils has consequentially managed to wipe out microbiota carte blanche across all areas where used.
I’ve spoken to farmers who told me that when they started, they could put a spade in the soil on any part of their property and dig up worms, but after years of applying nitrogenous fertilisers for their crops, all the worms were gone. Not only the worms. In many places, the birds have gone, along with small fauna and reptiles, replaced by mice plagues and locusts, not to mention the massive losses of soil through ploughing, harrowing… the erosion whether by wind or water removing the uppermost A Horizon, that part of the profile with the highest available levels of elements available for plant uptake.
Monocultural agriculture is a disaster; it’s environmentally ruinous, heavily dependent on agrochemical and artificial fertiliser inputs, enormously expensive, requires massive amounts of fossil fuels to operate machinery to input all of the above, and furnishes a product that is significantly below what ought to be expected by any consumer in terms of clean, healthy, chemical-residue free, along with the knowledge that the product was produced with the smallest environmentally damaging footprint possible.
The kicker, unfortunately, is that with a global population greater than 8 billion and projected to continue climbing, there are currently no feasible alternatives than this Faustian bargain engineered with Mother Nature. Organic farming would struggle to produce 1% of what large-scale technologically reliant agro-farming is able to do. The clumping of much of the world’s peoples into cities denies them the opportunity to ‘grow their own.’ It would seem that like lab rats, we’re condemned to this existence on this deadly treadmill of food supply courtesy of BASF, Bayer, Nufarm, Dow Agrosciences, Syngenta and all the rest of these enormously wealthy and influential purveyors of poisons.
Article well received. Good for sewage and water treatment. But!
I agree with Aleen and Canguro. Best to phase out agro-chemicals and nitrogenous fertilizers pronto. And pour all incentives and effort into remediation and at scale acceleration of organic self-sustaining processes.
Canguro, there’s a DW doco on YouTube about regenerative farming in Germany & Austria, titled: “Working the land for our climate – Healthy soil, healthy world | DW Documentary 2022”. It’s possible to add heaps of carbon to the soil by diversifying plantings & using no-till, all with the bonus of vastly reducing pesticide input. The calculation was that the supposed global problem of too much CO2 in the air is solved as using these methods. CO2 can be sequestered without hairbrain schemes such as the costly and impractical Carbon Capture and Storage scam are not needed.
Aleen:
I assume you’ve read Charles Massy”s Cal of the Reed Warbler about regenerative farming in Australia. Apart from a little anti–vax kookiness at one point, it’s a fascinating and inspiring piece of work.
leefe, not yet but will look into it. I’m late to the regen ag party but I can see why Big Ag, Big Fertilizers, Big Pests and the Mono-culture Club don’t want it to succeed: their profits go south.
Admittedly not across the detail but I am aware of Massy’s regenerative farming principles – have just found the book & downloaded it, thank you – but I think the salient point remains, that to feed a global population, where the three major commodity crops of rice, wheat & corn respectively contribute around 530 million tonnes p.a., wheat at 785 mill, and corn more than a billion tonnes p.a., with the burgeoning threats that arise per climatic change vis-a-vis water availability – too much or not enough – salification of river delta soils as a function of ocean levels rising as is happening in Vietnam in the Mekong Delta, soil degradation and decreasing capacity to supply sufficient nutrients for optimal growth, increased risks of plant fungal diseases as temperatures rise, insect attacks also, … there is a shopping list of emergent risks that are potentially capable of massively impacting these three major commodity crops and unfortunately regenerative farming has little or no future role in their production, given they are produced over vast areas of literally millions of hectares, and the climate crisis is real, it’s here & now, and the impacts to farming are happening now, in real time. Plant breeders cannot simply pluck a new and resistant variety out of the box… it takes years to do this, same with disease resistance, and given the extremely rapid rate at which both fungal diseases and insects can develop resistance to fungicides and pesticides it’s a sure bet that in the long run they’ll outwit science and rule the day.
Horsemen of the apocalypse it may well turn out to be. 🙁