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.
Evaluating long-term patterns of decreasing groundwater discharge through a lake-bottom permeable reactive barrier
Hydraulic tomography: 3D hydraulic conductivity and fracture network connectivity in a contaminated mudstone aquifer
Temporal and spatial variation in pharmaceutical concentrations in an urban river system
Pharmaceuticals, hormones, pesticides, and other bioactive contaminants in water, sediment, and tissue from Rocky Mountain National Park, 2012–2013
Acetylenotrophy: A hidden but ubiquitous microbial metabolism?
Bioactive contaminants of emerging concern in National Park waters of the northern Colorado Plateau, USA
Pharmaceutical manufacturing facility discharges can substantially increase the pharmaceutical load to U.S. wastewaters
Modeled de facto reuse and contaminants of emerging concern in drinking water source waters
Bioremediation in fractured rock: 1. Modeling to inform design, monitoring, and expectations
Bioremediation in fractured rock: 2. Mobilization of chloroethene compounds from the rock matrix
Estimating virus occurrence using Bayesian modeling in multiple drinking water systems of the United States
Estimating the high-arsenic domestic-well population in the conterminous United States
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.