Alleviating health risks associated with rainwater harvesting

Perceived and real public health risks associated with the quality of water from alternative water sources and supply systems, such as rainwater harvesting (RWH) and grey water reuse, continue to restrict their uptake in many countries. One option to alleviate these health risks is to treat alternative water to potable standard at the point of use (POU) as opposed to the point of supply, as undertaken in centralised systems. This paper presents the results of three international empirical field trials of a novel POU RWH treatment device. The results indicate that where the harvested rainwater did not contain elevated levels of pesticides or physico-chemical determinands, the POU device was able to reduce levels in outlet water to meet UK, EU and World Health Organization potable standards. Regarding microbiological determinands, such as total viable counts and coliforms, and microbial pathogens, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Legionella spp., the device achieved reduction to potable standard and full pathogen removal, respectively. Thus, while it is possible to treat harvested rainwater to potable standard with a POU device, whether it is desirable to do so to alleviate risks for all end uses remains a question for further debate

The development of an evidence based, evidence generating framework for enhancing Indigenous student success at an Australian university

In 2019, Kurongkurl Katitjin, Centre for Indigenous Australian Education and Research at Edith Cowan University, set up a new Indigenous student support service with the aim of enabling Indigenous students to progress through their degree at rates commensurate with the broader student population. This was an opportunity to design the service on the best available evidence and to embed an ongoing evaluation system that would generate evidence of its efficacy and with that, the capacity of ongoing refinement. The design of the service synthesised material from four discourses; existing literature on Indigenous student success, the demography of students, and best practice for service provision for marginalised and student voices. Key values and a service mission were identified, these underpinned the process of design, and the operations of the service. A framework was developed that enabled the generation of quantitative and qualitative data about the efficacy of the service. This paper demonstrates the significance of the process of design as well as describing the service and its embedded evaluation system

Formation of n-nitrosamines in drinking water sources: Case studies from Western Australia

This study investigated the formation of eight N-nitrosamines after laboratory chlorination and chloramination of Western Australian source waters (from protected catchments), which experience periodic cyanobacterial blooms. All measured N-nitrosamines, except N-nitrosodipropylamine, were detected at least once, and total N-nitrosamine formation was higher after chloramination than after chlorination. While previous studies have shown that some cyanobacteria can be related to the formation of N-nitrosamines, formation of N-nitrosamines in the waters tested did not correlate with total cyanobacteria count. Estimates of toxicity, using published 50% lifetime excess cancer risk values, indicated that N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) was the highest contributor to the total measured N-nitrosamine toxicity, suggesting that other measuredN-nitrosamines will only influence toxicity when they arepresent at significantly higher concentrations than NDMA.When assessing the overall health impact of disinfectionby-products, it is important to also consider the formationof disinfection by-products other than N-nitrosamines,which may be present at higher concentrations and thus maypresent higher toxicity