Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2010TX354B

Biological Treatment of Wastewater Contaminated with Estrogenic Compounds

Institute: Texas
Year Established: 2010 Start Date: 2010-03-01 End Date: 2011-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $5,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $10,000

Principal Investigators: Meghan Gallagher, R Karhikeyan

Abstract: Currently there are no surface or groundwater regulations to address the concentrations of natural and synthetic hormones resulting from animal waste treatment processes and domestic wastewater treatment effluents. These compounds are considered as emerging contaminants. Estrogen concentrations as low as 10 ng/L in wastewater have been known to alter the sex of fish (Young and Borch, 2009). The current types of treatment available to treat hormone-contaminated wastewater include photo-degradation, chemical oxidation, biological, and UV radiation. Biological treatment will be focused on in this research. Surface water and wastewater from various relevant sources will be collected and screened for bacteria that are capable of degrading hormones. Enrichment culture based methods will be used during the initial screening process. Potential bacterial species capable of degrading hormones will be isolated, genomic DNA from the isolates will be extracted, and sequenced. Then various environmental factors that control and govern the biodegradation of hormones will be studied to design biological treatment processes.