GOA, 26th October 2026: Researcher at the Goa Institute of Management (GIM) has found that combining existing wastewater treatment methods in the right sequence can improve the removal of endocrine disrupting chemicals or emerging contaminants/pollutants from municipal wastewater. The findings point to a potential way to strengthen existing wastewater treatment systems and tackle emerging pollutants without replacing conventional treatment processes.

Published in the prestigious Environmental Technology journal, the research examines how effectively different treatment methods could remove a mixture of chemicals three chemicals commonly found in consumer and industrial products:

·Diethyl Phthalate (DEP)

·Butyl Paraben (BuP)

·Bisphenol A (BPA)

These chemicals, known as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), can interfere with the body's hormonal system. They can enter wastewater through domestic and industrial discharges, making their removal a significant challenge, particularly when multiple EDCs are present simultaneously.

To address this challenge, Prof. Mehak Puri, Assistant Professor, Centre for Excellence in Sustainable Development, GIM, in collaboration with Dr. Kavita Gandhi and Dr. M. Suresh Kumar from CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nagpur, tested six different combinations of biological treatment and advanced oxidation, a process that uses ultraviolet light and hydrogen peroxide to break down pollutants. The team then compared different treatment sequences to identify which approach provided the best results.

The researchers found that treating wastewater first with a biological process, then with UV light and hydrogen peroxide, was the most effective among the six approaches tested.

In the lab-scale tests, the proposed approach resulted in:

• Complete removal of DEP, one of the three target chemicals.
• More than 90% removal of BuP and BPA.
• A 90.5% reduction in Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), an indicator of the overall organic load in wastewater

In comparison to the proposed approach, the conventional municipal wastewater treatment method removed between 36.41% and 55.11% of the target chemical mixture under the tested conditions.

Speaking about the findings of the research, Prof. Mehak Puri, Assistant Professor, GIM, said, “Emerging pollutants in wastewater are a growing concern because conventional treatment systems are not be designed to remove them, especially when different chemicals occur together. With limited standards and policies addressing these pollutants in India, our study explores treatment options that could help remove mixtures of these chemicals from wastewater in an effective and affordable way.”

In real-world application, this approach could be added as an extra treatment stage to improve the removal of emerging pollutants without replacing the current wastewater treatment process.

The research team also highlights that the study was conducted in a laboratory using real municipal wastewater, with the target chemicals added at concentrations higher than those typically found in the environment. This helped the team compare the effectiveness of different treatment methods under controlled conditions.

These findings provide a starting point for further research into combining biological treatment with advanced oxidation processes to improve wastewater treatment in a cost-effective and sustainable way, offering a potential way forward for removing emerging pollutants from wastewater.