Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Science Team
The Team Studies Toxicants and Pathogens in Drinking Water
To understand if and when humans are exposed
The Team Studies Toxicants and Pathogens in Streams
To understand if and when wildlife are exposed
The Team Studies Toxicant and Pathogen Sources and Movement
The Team Develops Tools to Understand Health Effects
The team studies toxicants and pathogens in water resources from their sources, through watersheds, aquifers, and infrastructure to human and wildlife exposures. That information is used to develop decision tools that protect human and wildlife health.
Americans rely on treatment of drinking water and wastewater, and the maintenance of water distribution infrastructure to assure safe water supplies for the public and wildlife. New chemicals are manufactured and used every day. Populations grow and demographics shift. Treatment, conveyance and plumbing infrastructure ages, and new technologies are developed to detect contaminants (toxicants and pathogens) at low levels. Consequently, questions arise about the health effects of exposure to contaminants indivually or in complex mixtures.
The US Geological Survey’s Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Science Team provides information on processes that affect contaminants as they move from naturally occurring and human-caused sources through aquifers, aquatic environments, and infrastructure. This comprehensive understanding of contaminant profiles from source to exposure is used to develop decision tools to economically, effectively, and efficiently reduce wildlife or human exposure and associated health risks.
The Team prioritizes science in underserved urban and rural agricultural communities and in tribal nations, which are disproportionally impacted by geologic and climatic events, by drinking-water source limitations and resultant dependence on water-reuse and unregulated/unmonitored private-wells.
More Information
Date Visualization: "Drop by Drop" and "PFAS Interactive Tool"
GeoHEALTH–USGS Newsletter-Special Issue on Drinking Water
Questions That the Team Answers:
- Is treated wastewater effluent a source of contaminants to streams that serve as source water for publicly and self-supplied drinking water supplies?
- What contaminants are in tap waters from publicly and self-supplied drinking water sources?
- What factors influence the types of contaminants that are present in tap water?
- Are there hazards to fish and wildlife associated with exposure to low-levels of contaminants in streams that receive wastewater?
- What mitigation actions are the most efficient and cost effective at reducing exposure at the tap for humans? Or in water resources for wildlife?
- Can decision tools be established to to define, prioritize and mitigate human and wildlife health risks?
USGS featured science articles related to this science team’s activities.
USGS data releases associated with this science team.
USGS publications associated with this science team.
De facto reuse and disinfection by-products in drinking water systems in the Shenandoah River watershed
Lithostratigraphic, geophysical, and hydrogeologic observations from a boring drilled to bedrock in glacial sediments near Nantucket Sound in East Falmouth, Massachusetts
Predictive analysis using chemical-gene interaction networks consistent with observed endocrine activity and mutagenicity of U.S. streams
Cell-Based metabolomics for untargeted screening and prioritization of vertebrate-active stressors in streams across the United States
Seasonal and spatial variation in the location and reactivity of a nitrate-contaminated groundwater discharge zone in a lakebed
The complex spatial distribution of trichloroethene and the probability of NAPL occurrence in the rock matrix of a mudstone aquifer
Residence time controls on the fate of nitrogen in flow‐through lakebed sediments
Multi-scale preferential flow processes in an urban streambed under variable hydraulic conditions
A novel method to characterise levels of pharmaceutical pollution in large scale aquatic monitoring campaigns
Integrated assessment of wastewater reuse, exposure risk, and fish endocrine disruption in the Shenandoah River watershed
Constraining the oxygen isotopic composition of nitrate produced by nitrification
The dual‐domain porosity apparatus: Characterizing dual porosity at the sediment/water interface
The team studies toxicants and pathogens in water resources from their sources, through watersheds, aquifers, and infrastructure to human and wildlife exposures. That information is used to develop decision tools that protect human and wildlife health.
Americans rely on treatment of drinking water and wastewater, and the maintenance of water distribution infrastructure to assure safe water supplies for the public and wildlife. New chemicals are manufactured and used every day. Populations grow and demographics shift. Treatment, conveyance and plumbing infrastructure ages, and new technologies are developed to detect contaminants (toxicants and pathogens) at low levels. Consequently, questions arise about the health effects of exposure to contaminants indivually or in complex mixtures.
The US Geological Survey’s Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Science Team provides information on processes that affect contaminants as they move from naturally occurring and human-caused sources through aquifers, aquatic environments, and infrastructure. This comprehensive understanding of contaminant profiles from source to exposure is used to develop decision tools to economically, effectively, and efficiently reduce wildlife or human exposure and associated health risks.
The Team prioritizes science in underserved urban and rural agricultural communities and in tribal nations, which are disproportionally impacted by geologic and climatic events, by drinking-water source limitations and resultant dependence on water-reuse and unregulated/unmonitored private-wells.
More Information
Date Visualization: "Drop by Drop" and "PFAS Interactive Tool"
GeoHEALTH–USGS Newsletter-Special Issue on Drinking Water
Questions That the Team Answers:
- Is treated wastewater effluent a source of contaminants to streams that serve as source water for publicly and self-supplied drinking water supplies?
- What contaminants are in tap waters from publicly and self-supplied drinking water sources?
- What factors influence the types of contaminants that are present in tap water?
- Are there hazards to fish and wildlife associated with exposure to low-levels of contaminants in streams that receive wastewater?
- What mitigation actions are the most efficient and cost effective at reducing exposure at the tap for humans? Or in water resources for wildlife?
- Can decision tools be established to to define, prioritize and mitigate human and wildlife health risks?
USGS featured science articles related to this science team’s activities.
USGS data releases associated with this science team.
USGS publications associated with this science team.