Cleanwater

Access to safe drinking and fresh water is a matter of concern in a number of countries worldwide with serious health and development problems at national, regional and local scale. More than 771 million people around the world still lacked basic drinking water service in 2021 . Problems associated with contamination of drinking water preferentially affect infants, young children, pregnant women, people with disabilities and the elderly, especially those living in rural areas under unsanitary conditions.

Waterborne diseases are associated mainly with biological pathogen (viruses, bacteria, microbes, protozoa, etc.) contamination. The second largest threat to health is the chronic consumption of xenobiotics released in the environment by the people living on territories with intensive industrial or agricultural activities. The exposure to these pollutants occurs mainly via water and food consumption.

The chemical nature of xenobiotics is diverse; these include heavy elements/metals (HEMs, e.g., arsenic, lead and mercury), persistent and emerging organic pollutants such as pesticides, trihalomethanes and pharmaceuticals, residual agrochemicals (e.g., nitrates and ammonia) and radionuclides. Exposure to these hazardous species gives rise to adverse effects in human health, affecting for instance the gastrointestinal, immunological and neurological system, causing even death under extreme conditions.

One of the main challenges when treating contaminated water concerns the wide variety of the contaminants present. According to the latest data published by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in June 2020, there are more than 86,000 substances in its Toxic Substances Control Act Chemical Substance Inventory and about 1,500 new chemicals are introduced into commerce every year .

It is simply not possible to obtain adequate scientifically proven information on their occurrence fate, toxicity and exposure levels and complete credible chemical toxicity assessment even of a fraction of this number of new entries. Actual water treatment processes (e.g., heating, filtration, adsorption using charcoal, UV light and other tertiary advanced oxidation processes, AOP) fail to eliminate all these hazardous contaminants at once due to a large diversity of their properties and structure (different size, shape, chemical composition, surface charge, etc.).

Moreover, they are too expensive for many third countries. The complexity is even higher once these species have been incorporated in human body due to their prevalence in organs for longer periods and the associated health effects. Current medications, if there are any at all, are used for the treatment of acute poisoning and the only recommendation suggested how to protect the population chronically exposed to the xenobiotic intake, is to use clean water and food.

The development of a new efficient water treatment technology capable of removing a wide range of xenobiotics at low operational costs with minimal energy consumption is a high priority for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6): Clean Water and Sanitation. Providing clean water and protecting health from chronic exposure of population to the intake of hazardous substances also addresses the SDG3: Good Health and Well-being.

The main goal of the CLEANWATER project is the development of advanced multifunctional and versatile adsorbents able to efficiently purify contaminated fresh water and protect the human organism against exposure to biological pollutants and xenobiotics.