CONCLUSIONS FROM UFA, RUSSIA, DRINKING-WATER DIOXIN CLEANUP EXPERIMENTS INVOLVING DIFFERENT TREATMENT TECHNOLOGIES

The city of Ufa, in the Bashkortostan Republic of Russia, is believed to have dioxin contamination of its water supply from 30 years of gas ejections, sewage and buried sludge from the Chimprom industrial facto ry, and possibly other sources. A project was developed to provide tec hnology at relatively low cost for treating dioxin contaminated water in routine and also in emergency situations. This paper describes the results of the 15-year research project to remove dioxins from drinkin g water. Three different methods were experimentally tested for effici ency at removing dioxins from tap water. The methods used were: (1) oz onization plus filtration through powder sorbents, (2) filtration thro ugh sand, and (3) filtration through granulated sorbents. It was found that the method of filtration through granulated sorbents was most ef fective at removing dioxins from water: 90-95% of all PCDD and PCDF is omers were removed from water samples. This research also shows that t he most toxic congener, 2,3,7,8-TCDD, can be removed effectively and e fficiently. In addition, there are no significant differences between the extractability of PCDDs and PCDFs. Reductions in exposure to human s from contaminated drinking water can be accomplished via sorptive wa ter treatments for relatively reasonable cost, making this a practical approach. This method of decreasing toxic chemicals is being implemen ted in Ufa, Russia.