Waterdoc

Sadly this is pretty common. Here are some nasty pictures from a recent one in greater Vancouver.

I'm a water engineer with a PhD, so not a tech nerd but definitely a nerd :) I came here mostly because I find the Reddit app annoying and the app I was using came here.

The Romans used lead as a sweetener...

I don't know the details about alum production (assuming that is what you are referring to), but there are many alternative coagulants available now. Sure the supply logistics would be incredibly challenging and many people would have to boil their water or use point-of-use filters, but this take is pretty doomer in my opinion. Most plants use alum because it's cheap and easy, not because it's their only option.

Systems that were already using activated carbon or ion exchange for organics removal may have some treatment capacity, but otherwise the first systems specifically for treating drinking water are being designed and constructed now. There are contaminated sites that already have treatment or containment in place.

This is very interesting. Currently, most ion exchange systems that remove PFAS have to dispose of their brine as hazardous waste, which is very costly and doesn't necessarily destroy PFAS - in Florida, for example, they inject the brine into a deep aquifer.

A lot of novel technologies target PFAS destruction in these concentrated waste streams, but often further concentration is required before you can effectively destroy PFAS with advanced oxidation processes. If they could use low-UV to destroy it without further concentration or additional chemicals (beside the salt already used to regenerate the resin), ion exchange would become a much better solution for treated PFAS contaminated water.

It's "forever" in the environmental sense that they don't break down naturally (or at least very, very slowly). That said, "forever chemicals" is more of a media buzzword than a term that scientists use.

Exactly my workflow, but I used R Markdown!

I wrote about half of my thesis in R Markdown using Git to backup my work. It's fantastic because you can have your plots and statistics integrated directly into your paper and formatting in Markdown is much easier than straight up latex.

Water is disinfected with either chlorine, chloramine (ammonia + chlorine), ozone, or UV light. In North America chlorine is almost universal because it provides disinfection residual, which keeps water safe while it is travelling from the treatment plant to the consumer. Fluoride is added solely as a supplement to improve dental health.

Not not contaminants are anthropogenic. Decomposing organic matter, heavy metals from soil and rock erosion, microorganisms and microbial by-products all naturally occur in wetlands and are dangerous to us. There's nothing wrong with that, just don't drink it or get it in open wounds :)

Clean is relative, there are lots of contaminants in wetland water that make it unsafe. They are incredibly important and very useful for naturally cleaning water, but please don't drink the swamp water.