Eregno, F.E.; Moges, M.E.; Heistad, A. Treated Greywater Reuse for Hydroponic Lettuce Production in a Green Wall System: Quantitative Health Risk Assessment. Water2017, 9, 454.
Eregno, F.E.; Moges, M.E.; Heistad, A. Treated Greywater Reuse for Hydroponic Lettuce Production in a Green Wall System: Quantitative Health Risk Assessment. Water 2017, 9, 454.
Eregno, F.E.; Moges, M.E.; Heistad, A. Treated Greywater Reuse for Hydroponic Lettuce Production in a Green Wall System: Quantitative Health Risk Assessment. Water2017, 9, 454.
Eregno, F.E.; Moges, M.E.; Heistad, A. Treated Greywater Reuse for Hydroponic Lettuce Production in a Green Wall System: Quantitative Health Risk Assessment. Water 2017, 9, 454.
Abstract
The scarcity and pollution of freshwater are extremely crucial issues today and the expansion of water reuse have been considered as an option to reduce its impact. This study aims to assess the efficiency of an integrated greywater treatment system and hydroponic lettuce production as a part of a green wall structure and to evaluate the health risk associated with the production and consumption of lettuce through quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) and chemical health risk assessment. The study was conducted based on the unique configuration of source separation system; on-site greywater treatment system; green wall structure as a polishing step; and hydroponic lettuce production in the green wall structure. The final effluent from the system was used to grow three lettuce varieties by adding urine as a nutrient solution. Both water samples and plant biomass were collected and tested for E. coli and heavy metals contamination. The system has gained a cumulative 5.1 log10 reduction of E. coli in the final effluent and no E. coli found in the plant biomass. QMRA results indicated that the system attained the health-based targets, 10–6 DALYs per person per year. Similarly, health risk index (HRI) and targeted hazard quotient (THQ) results did not exceed the permissible level, thus the chemical health risk concern was insignificant.
Keywords
Source separation system; Greywater treatment; Water reuse; Hydroponic system; Green wall; Heavy metals bioaccumulation; QMRA; Health risk assessment
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Environmental Science
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
