‘Far too many serious pollution incidents’ says Environment Agency water quality report

Environment Agency Chair Emma Howard Boyd has called on water companies and farmers to cut the amount of pollution incidents harming England’s waters and...

Sponges offer hope for affordable spill handling

RESEARCHERS at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genova have published a paper demonstrating that simple sponges made from polyurethane foam can be more...

Water companies need to do more to protect the environment, says EA report

Water companies need to do more to protect the environment, says a new Environment Agency report published on 11 July 2018. Although there has been...

Oil leak from ageing landfill

INVESTIGATIONS have been launched by both Aberdeenshire Council and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency into reports of oil spotted leaking from the ageing Blackdog...

Waste sites warned “there’s no smoke without fire water”

WASTE handling and recycling sites, currently under obligation to re-assess their fire accident plans, could be failing to plan for the impact of millions...

CIP micropollutants research published by UKWIR

Thirteen research reports have just been published, which aim to boost the water sector’s knowledge of microplastics and further the understanding of anti-microbial resistance...

Rainwater is no longer drinkable thanks to PFAS, say researchers

A perspective article by researchers from Stockholm University and ETH Zurich, published in August in Environmental Science & Technology, suggests that environmental contamination by...

Bee killing pesticides polluting the vast majority of English rivers

A new analysis of the latest official data from the Environment Agency has uncovered widespread river pollution linked to toxic neonicotinoid pesticides (neonics), known...

Discharging a duty

Water industry intransigence and regulatory neglect seem to provide the backdrop to a sewage dumping scandal that has made headlines recently and emboldened citizen scientists and environmental campaigners. Will 2022 be the year water companies are finally forced to get their act together, asks Envirotec.

Near real-time data added to popular Sewage Map

Near-real time alerts of raw sewage discharges have been added to the interactive Sewage Map provided by charity The Rivers Trust, and the group...

As winters warm, nutrient pollution threatens 40% of US

A first-of-its-kind national study appears to find that previously frozen winter nutrient pollution — unlocked by rising winter temperatures and rainfall — is putting...

Contaminant cornucopia

Monitoring projects that collect and analyze urban runoff samples have just begun to characterize the dizzying array of contaminants, including tire- and vehicle-derived chemicals, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), phosphorous, metals and many others, according to the American Chemical Society.

Innovate UK funding for solution to tackle PFAS

London-based chemical technology firm Puraffinity has developed an innovative approach to eliminating PFAS from water supplies, with funding from Innovate UK. Its solution is a...