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Impact of activated carbon block point‐of‐use filters on chloraminated water quality
Author(s) -
Alfredo Katherine,
Lin Jie,
Islam Anjuman,
Wang ZhiWu
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
awwa water science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2577-8161
DOI - 10.1002/aws2.1180
Subject(s) - activated carbon , environmental science , nitrate , nitrite , water quality , filter (signal processing) , environmental engineering , water treatment , hydrology (agriculture) , environmental chemistry , chemistry , ecology , biology , engineering , organic chemistry , adsorption , electrical engineering , geotechnical engineering
Washington, District of Columbia, installed activated carbon‐based lead mitigation filters on all water fountains/sinks in break rooms, classrooms, and health suites located in public elementary schools. To investigate the impact of these point‐of‐use filters, 12 water fountains/taps with various filter ages, with and without sediment prefilters, spread across four schools were monitored weekly from July to December 2017, along with two unfiltered sources per school ( n = 8). Within the first 100 days postinstallation, filtrate from filters in schools with high influent monochloramine and no prefilter temporarily increased nitrite concentrations, with concentrations of some filters exceeding 0.4 mg/L N. Subsequent decreases in filtrate nitrite for these filters coincided with increases in live cell counts. Microbial community “fingerprints” were determined with flow cytometry. Filtered and unfiltered water fingerprints differed, indicating selective microbial growth on, and release from, the filters into the filtrate.