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United States National Sewage Sludge Repository at Arizona State University—a new resource and research tool for environmental scientists, engineers, and epidemiologists

  • Developments and Applications of Environmental Specimen Banks for Monitoring Emerging Contaminants
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Abstract

Processed municipal sewage sludges (MSS) are an abundant, unwanted by-product of wastewater treatment, increasingly applied to agriculture and forestry for inexpensive disposal and soil conditioning. Due to their high organic carbon and lipid contents, MSS not only is rich in carbon and nutrients but also represents a “sink” for recalcitrant, hydrophobic, and potentially bioaccumulative compounds. Indeed, many organics sequestered and concentrated in MSS meet the US Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of being persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic (PBT). In a strategic effort, our research team at the Biodesign Institute has created the National Sewage Sludge Repository (NSSR), a large repository of digested MSSs from 164 wastewater treatment plants from across the USA, as part of the Human Health Observatory (H2O) at Arizona State University (ASU). The NSSR likely represents the largest archive of digested MSS specimens in the USA. The present study summarizes key findings gleaned thus far from analysis of NSSR samples. For example, we evaluated the content of toxicants in MSS and computed estimates of nationwide inventories of mass produced chemicals that become sequestrated in sludge and later are released into the environment during sludge disposal on land. Ongoing efforts document co-occurrence of a variety of PBT compounds in both MSS and human samples, while also identifying a large number of potentially harmful MSS constituents for which human exposure data are still lacking. Finally, we summarize future opportunities and invite collaborative use of the NSSR by the research community. The H2O at ASU represents a new resource and research tool for environmental scientists and the larger research community. As illustrated in this work, this repository can serve to (i) identify and prioritize emerging contaminants, (ii) provide spatial and temporal trends of contaminants, (iii) inform and evaluate the effectiveness of environmental policy-making and regulations, and (iv) approximate, ongoing exposures and body burdens of mass-produced chemicals in human society.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Rick Stevens, Harry B. McCarty, and the US EPA for providing the biosolids samples from the 2001 and 2006/2007 National Sewage Sludge Surveys. This study was supported in part by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grants 1R01ES015445, 1R01ES020889, and their respective supplements. The content of this work is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIEHS or the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Environmental Security, The Biodesign Institute, Security and Defense Systems Initiative, Arizona State University, 781 E. Terrace Road, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

    Arjun K. Venkatesan, Hansa Y. Done & Rolf U. Halden

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  1. Arjun K. Venkatesan
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  2. Hansa Y. Done
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  3. Rolf U. Halden
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Correspondence to Rolf U. Halden.

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Venkatesan, A.K., Done, H.Y. & Halden, R.U. United States National Sewage Sludge Repository at Arizona State University—a new resource and research tool for environmental scientists, engineers, and epidemiologists. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 1577–1586 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-2961-1

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