PRESENTER: Dr. Matteo Papa (Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University)
BIOGRAPHY: Dr. Matteo Papa is starting his postdoctoral Endeavour scholarship at the Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University (Gold Coast Campus). He received Bachelor and Master Degree in Environmental Engineering from University of Brescia (Italy) and his PhD in Environmental Engineering from Technical University of Milan (Italy). Later he did postdoctoral experiences in Spain (University of Santiago de Compostela) and US (University of California, Irvine).
Dr. Papa's research focuses on wastewater treatment, both on consolidated (wastewater reuse and sewage sludge management) and advanced (trace pollutants) topics. As strong core, he carried out an integrated procedures for effluent quality assessment, coupling detection of trace organic pollutants and biological assays, such as estrogenic and mutagenic activity.
ABSTRACT: WWTPs (Wastewater Treatment Plants) usually undergo “conventional” monitoring, which consists of determining several traditional physico-chemical parameters - solids, COD, nutrients. Nevertheless, pollution phenomena are increasing nowadays, becoming more diversified and complicated, due to the high level of human activities and related contamination processes, with new synthetic substances being continuously released into the environment: as an example of new pollution mechanisms, impaired reproductive performance in aquatic organisms, and even feminization of shellfish, have been recorded in the past decade, as a consequence of exposure to hormone-like compounds. For these reasons, information provided by physico-chemical parameters alone is no longer sufficient to describe the real nature of WWTP effluents. On one hand, this up-grade can be performed by analytical chemistry, increasing the number of detected substances. On the other hand, the global effects of WWTP effluents can be assessed with the application of biological assays, which can directly measure the activity exerted by this matrix.
Dr. Papa will present his research work carried out so far on the fate of trace pollutants in sewage treatment plants, with a special focus on tertiary treatment technologies, and he will show how biological assays can play a fundamental role for a correct rating of treatment options.