Management and control of wastewater: An ecotoxicological approach

Wastewater treatment represents a continuous challenge for engineers, environmental scientists and regulators. At the beginning it was the biological load to be reduced as much as possible to prevent infections and eutrophication phenomena. Afterwards, besides domestic discharges, industrial wastewater required specific technologies and treatment facilities to allow the removal of targeted pollutants. Today, an increasing number of new contaminants are rising up such as pharmaceuticals, personal care products and nanomaterials just to cite the most recent categories. The current goal in wastewater management is to move towards the (near-) zero approach or, ideally, the zero-discharge requiring to recover and reuse treated wastewater as much as possible. About that, ecotoxicological tools may offer a great support in the defining the rate of contamination removal during the treatment processes and allow further assessment about effluent second life. An overview of ecotoxicological approaches to assess wastewater environmental impacts to saltwater is presented and discussed considering toxicity tests as essential guidelines. © 2013 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.