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As per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) emerge as a global concern, it is crucial to foster collaborative endeavours aimed at discontinuing their persistent usage while devising effective methods for treating legacy PFAS in the environment.
Drinking water infrastructure in urban settings is increasingly affected by population growth and disruptions like extreme weather events. The integration of direct wastewater reuse can help to maintain drinking water service when the system is compromised.
Hybrid urban water supply systems combine conventional, centralized water sources with distributed sources. Such system configurations are shown to exhibit lower severity, range of impact and duration of substandard performance compared with centralized systems in a number of disruptive incidents.
The potential hazard of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances has led to new regulations affecting requirements for water quality. This Perspective proposes a protocol to adapt water treatment technology to meet new regulation requirements.
Functional relationships that capture the spatial co-variability of forcing and response variables provide a framework well-suited for global water model evaluation. Evaluating these relationships highlights large differences across models’ representations of the water cycle and the need for model improvement.
Fe-based electrodes emerge as an effective and economical option to treat nitrate-laden wastewater. Whereas Fe cathode corrosion is commonly considered as an adverse factor for the electroreduction of nitrate to ammonia, intentional corrosion-induced surficial reconstruction has the potential to enhance catalytic performance.
By utilizing flooding records and county-level daily deaths during 2015 to 2019 across 98 counties in North Carolina, United States, this study found significant associations between cause-specific mortality and short-term exposure to flooding.
Desalination is one of the most important responses to global water challenges. Decision-making on where, how and why to develop desalination plants must focus more on addressing social issues, such as universal access, justice and sustainability.
The El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a critical control on winter precipitation in the Intermountain West of North America but is impacted by mountainous terrain and climate change. This study isolates ENSO impacts from these complicating factors using a spatially distributed, nonlinear spline model applied to long-term gauge observations.
Large-scale afforestation is championed as a way to restore degraded habitats, conserve biodiversity and advance societal improvements. In the Middle East, a severely water-stressed region, we argue that urban greening will need to play a major part in efforts to deliver a more sustainable and water-sensitive strategy, while also enhancing urban liveability.
Membranes are useful for removing pollutants from water, but the pore size of most commercial membranes is larger than the molecular size of many trace organic contaminants. Here an engineered covalent organic framework allows pore size regulation to efficiently remove organic pollutants.
Global water models are important tools for understanding the water cycle. This study evaluates eight global water models by focusing on functional relationships that capture the spatial co-variability of forcing and response variables.
Almost 250 years have passed since the invention of the modern flush toilet. With nearly half of the world’s population still lacking access to safely managed sanitation, it is time to accelerate change.
Access to sanitation is a fundamental right that is still missing, especially in many parts of low-income countries. This Perspective focuses on the impact of unclean school latrines on child health.
This Review identifies factors that lead to ‘unsafely managed sanitation’ in the United States, the specific types of access, and obstacles to characterizing and addressing the problem.
A hybrid photocatalyst–photothermal sheet can effectively harness sunlight to produce hydrogen fuel. At the same time, it can purify open-water sources such as seawater and industrial wastewater.
Droughts and heatwaves amplify water scarcity by decreasing water availability, worsening water quality and increasing sectoral water use. These three driving mechanisms interact strongly, but insights into this complex interplay, particularly between water quality and sectoral water use, are urgently needed to unravel the drivers of water scarcity and to identify robust solutions for sustainable water management.
A water splitting system capable of operating stably using contaminated water sources for decentralized H2 production would be a more practical approach towards solar H2 production. A floating hybrid photocatalyst sheet device can simultaneously perform photocatalytic gas-phase water splitting and clean water production using contaminated water sources such as seawater and other waste waters.
Farmer livelihoods and food production are impacted by water shortages in many regions globally. These shortages can be mitigated by changing the mix of crops produced in water-scarce regions, potentially resulting in reduced irrigation needs of 28–57%.