Conventional wastewater treatment methods and their ability to remove EDCs

In this section, we discuss the expected and observed removal of endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) by conventional treatment methods that are typically applied by municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The removals depend on both the type of treatment applied, operating conditions, and the properties of the different compounds that regulate their sorption to primary and secondary sludge, volatility, and biodegradability. Since these properties vary considerably between the different compounds included in the large group of compounds with known and suspected EDC, their fate is considered in well-justified subgroups. Moreover, there are limited data available documenting the fate in WWTPs for most EDCs and most of the available data describing the properties needed to predict their fate is based on model predictions, often with low levels of confidence, and not experimentally obtained data. Hence, here we summarize the expected and observed removals of a set of 28 selected EDCs for which documented removal ratios as well as predicted properties with relatively high confidence levels are available. Based on the results for these selected EDCs, we try to generalize to “typical EDCs” by dividing them in subgroups based on expected removal by different types of conventional wastewater treatment methods.