Grant: Alliance Grants

Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) which include contaminants such as pharmaceuticals, personal care products and per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have major negative impacts on human and ecosystem health (e.g. carcinogens) including the potential to develop antimicrobial resistance. It is well established that these contaminants are widely occurring in the environment due to human activities. Despite this, there is currently limited understanding of how they travel and react in our groundwater and surface waters. This makes it challenging to establish effective programs and policies for the management and mitigation of CECs as we are not able to predict their fate and thus the risks they pose for human and ecosystem health. With increasing anthropogenic pressures on our water resources, prediction of these risks is essential. This international collaboration aims to (i) generate new understanding of the environmental factors that govern the movement and transformation of CECs in groundwater systems, (ii) establish new predictive relationships for quantifying CEC transformations in groundwater zones that are often characterized by high reactivity (e.g., with strong redox gradients), and (iii) apply this knowledge to develop a computer modeling tool make predictions on the movement and transformation of CECs. This collaboration between Western and leading researchers in Australia who have access to world-class chemical analytical facilities will strengthen Canada's position as a leader in the global effort to predict, manage and mitigate the risks posed by CECs. There is major public concern in Canada related to CECs in the environment. Government managers, regulators and policy makers are in urgent need of the new knowledge and tools that will be generated from this collaboration to make science-informed decisions to understand and reduce the public and ecosystem health risks posed by CECs. Expected outcomes are of significance as they will include a much improved ability to predict and thus control the fate of CECs in our groundwater and surface waters.