Urban wastewater under micropollutant surveillance
The new wastewater directive adds a fourth treatment stage for pharmaceutical and cosmetic residues and an obligation to monitor PFAS and microplastics. Common measurement methods are to be ready in 2027.
- Until now what mattered in wastewater was mainly organic load, nitrogen and phosphorus.
- Substances present in trace amounts, which the older treatment stages do not remove, have now been added.
- The largest plants are to introduce a fourth treatment stage — for residues of medicines and cosmetic ingredients.
- A large share of its cost will be borne by the producers of those goods, and its effectiveness will have to be demonstrated by measurement.
- Monitoring of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and of microplastics is set out separately: at the inlet and the outlet of the plant, and for microplastics also in sewage sludge.
- The way of determining the sum of PFAS is to be ready by 2 January 2027 and the method for microplastics by 2 July 2027 — until then laboratories work with their own methods and the standards already available.
- Wastewater testing stops being the domain of classic sanitary chemistry: it calls for trace-level instrumentation and competence in particle microscopy and spectroscopy.
Source: EUR-Lex