NEWEA Microconstituents Conference Report

Last week, I and several students in my Surface Water Quality Modeling class attended the NEWEA Microconstituents speciality conference at Bentley University. Microconstituents (aka emerging contaminants, pharmaceuticals and personal care products) are an important new problem we face as environmental engineers and this conference provided a good introduction to this topic. I made a presentation entitled “Where the Pipe Ends: Antibiotics and Antibiotic Resistance in the Ambient Environment”. You know, water quality models have evolved in step with environmental problems: Dissolved Oxygen (Streeter-Phelps) > Pathogens > Eutrophication > Toxics (e.g. PCBs) > Heavy metals > Harmful algae (e.g. cyanobacteria) > Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs). The development of models for antibiotic resistance is a natural next step for water quality modeling. Here are some pictures from the event:

https://plus.google.com/photos/106451974855194253783/albums/6078591575540040705