Identifying Future Drinking Water Contaminants (1999) / Chapter Skim
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12 Emerging Drinking Water COntaminant Databases: A European Perspective
12 Emerging Drinking Water COntaminant Databases: A European Perspective
Pages 244-256
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From page 244... ...
Lake water is often remarkably free of chemical pollutants but has its own biological problems (growth of microaigae or cyanobacteria) , whereas river water is often quite heavily polluted and in need of various treatment steps.
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From page 245... ...
Governments were and are of course important because of the regulations and laws that are issued, but they were not very active in finding and inhibiting pollution. The waterworks associations were much more active in this field: apart from monitoring water quality at many places, staff members also went by boat to relevant emission points of industries or communities to find the sources of pollution.
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From page 246... ...
The waterworks associations concentrated on raw water and drinking water; the governments concentrated on raw water, sediments, and many other aspects that concern water from rivers, lakes, or groundwater. As a result, monitoring programs of the governments contain many more aspects but analyze fewer contaminants in raw water and nothing in drinking water.
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From page 247... ...
Interpretation: interpretation of data is the next step, taking into account the detection limit of the analytical method, the recovery rate, plausibility of the result, and so forth. Integration: This is followed by integration with other facts or factors, such as limiting values concerning human health or ecotoxicology, presence of other contaminants with similar or antagonistic behavior, biological or chemical degradation, and the influence of radiation.
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From page 248... ...
CONTENTS AND USES OF DATABASES Databases have several purposes: they are filled with relevant information on physical properties, chemical substances, (microbiological data, limiting values, etc.; a query makes it possible to obtain the raw data; connections between parameters or monitoring points should be possible; calculations and statistical operations should be possible; and output in form of tables or graphs is standard. Databases are used to check the status quo (e.g., the drinking water quality at a certain moment)
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From page 249... ...
Formerly, a report consisted of datasheets listing the analytical data of all parameters that had been analyzed. The database had to produce these reports based either on actual measurements or statistical data such as monthly averages, minima and maxima, percentiles, and so forth.
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From page 250... ...
indication of adverse factors; development of riverbeds and riverbanks in time, influence of sea-level rising; rivers and lakes as commercial shipping routes; and development of recreational shipping and its influence on water quality, biological diversity, and structure of riverbanks and bank vegetation. Data Collection: Systematic or Pragmatic Approach A systematic approach covering all kinds of aspects would require a database that has been structured in such a way that it can contain a wide variety of data for which questions have actually been asked or might be asked in the 250 Identifying Future Drinking Water Contaminants
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From page 251... ...
The latter are nowadays more interested in the quality of river sediments, since the sediments act like a sink containing all kinds of undesirable chemical substances of the past, which are slowly released into the environment effects that are all the more noticeable because of the much improved water quality. Thus, interest is gradually switching to new matrices, and the study of older parameters or former matrices is reduced.
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From page 252... ...
; and able to produce tables or graphs via query by example. The database of the R1WA-TAWR is a modern example: it works on powerful PCs under Windows 95 or NT; its structure is modular, consisting of a core database for raw data, surrounded by a variable number of specialized modules (e.g., for production of tables or graphs, calculations, statistical methods, trends, detection of extreme values, monitoring schemes)
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From page 253... ...
This is probably the case for the majority of new contaminants, whether they are new chemical substances, medicinal drugs Emerging Drinking Water Contaminant Databases 253
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From page 254... ...
Biological Databases Biological data in the classical sense of the word are often placed in specialized databases, not together with chemical parameters. The reasons for this are that thousands of names can be involved if algae and invertebrates are studied; synonyms should be inserted and kept up to date, since in older literature different names are often used for the same taxon; and a hierarchical structure is wanted that shows the relationship between taxa (not only an alphabetical list of unrelated names)
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From page 255... ...
FROM DATA TO INFORMATION As noted earlier, information is a much advanced stage and is reached after evaluation of datasets and integration with other aspects. Modern decision makers rely on information, whereas tables with raw data (the original product of a database)
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From page 256... ...
The structures must be as flexible as possible, based on specialized modules surrounding a database core. Reporting facilities have become a matter of utmost concern, and the information to the general public must follow the modern lines: from reports to disks, CD-ROM, and the Internet.
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