Our colleagues Maolida Nihemati (UFZ) and Beatrice Cantoni (POLIMI) presented their posters at the GRC Gordon Research Conference on water disinfection, byproducts and health. We congratulate Maolida to get the Poster Award as one of three winners. Maolida works on the challenge to identify polar disinfection-byproducts on drinking water; her poster is entitled “Revisiting disinfection byproducts with supercritical fluid chromatography-high resolution-mass spectrometry: identification of novel halogenated sulfonic acids in disinfected drinking water”. Beatrice Cantoni’s poster was entitled “SafeCREW: a holistic project to reduce NOM and DBPs in drinking water and minimize the human health risk under climate change scenarios”.
The GRC took place from 30 July to 4 August 2023 at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, US. This international scientific conference is highly relevant for our SafeCREW project as it focuses on cutting-edge and unpublished results on the options and limitations of disinfection and oxidation processes for water safety. It fosters discussions and informal interactions among scientists of all career stages. The sessions centred around microbiological contaminants, disinfection and disinfection-byproducts, natural organic matter (NOM) including environmental changes, chemical and microbiological issues on water quality in distribution systems, assessment of toxicity and practical approaches to reduce the risks of disinfection-byproducts. Maria José Farré (Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA), Spain and coordinator of our sister project “intoDBP” also contributed with her talk “Monitoring Dissolved Organic Matter Changes and DBP Formation with High Resolution Mass Spectrometry”.
The conference was held in conjunction with the “Water Disinfection, Byproducts and Health” Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) from 29 to 30 July 2023. The GRS is a unique forum for young doctoral and post-doctoral researchers to present their work, discuss cutting edge ideas, and pre-published data, as well as to build collaborative relationships with their peers and exchange the latest research findings and innovative ideas on disinfection and oxidation processes for building sustainable water supplies globally. Challenges of maintaining sustainable and safe drinking water for the world under multiple stressors (e.g., climate change, world population growth) are addressed. On Saturday, 30 July, Beatrice Cantoni (postdoctoral researcher at POLIMI) acted as Discussion Leader of the session “Chemical and Biological Assessment of Disinfection/Oxidation Processes and Their Byproducts”.
