Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering

Research Field: ENVIRONMENTAL RISK AND TRANSPORT OF PHARMACEUTICALS IN
GROUNDWATER SYSTEMS

Studies reports various pollutants and emerging contaminants in soil, surface water, groundwater and
reclaimed wastewater, including, e.g., pesticides, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, and/or engineered
nanoparticles. Among the various types of emerging contaminants, pharmaceuticals are of key interest. While it is documented that pharmaceutical contamination of surface water has affected severely some local ecological systems, the geo-chemical processes that occur during
pharmaceutical transport through heterogeneous groundwater systems are still obscure; there is still a longstanding need for further studies that investigate both the chemistry and the transport of pharmaceuticals in environmentally-relevant conditions. Such studies could favor social and political acceptance of routine industrial application, through establishment of robust risk assessment procedures.

Activities will be mainly keyed to identifying effects of diverse conditions (e.g., geochemical properties, environmental conditions, medium heterogeneities) on the
migration of selected pharmaceuticals. Expected scientific contributions include (i) experimental evidence of dynamics governing migration within natural soils; (ii) theoretical analysis of transport of pharmaceuticals in (physically and chemically) heterogeneous porous media and assessment of the potential of reactive transport formulations to depict their dynamics in (time-dependent)
flows; (iii) conceptual models and associated numerical algorithms; (iv) role of information theory in multi-model analysis and uncertainty assessment linked to (eventually competitive) dynamics of pharmaceuticals; (v) data sets for process recognition and benchmarking of numerical methods.

Contacts:
Prof. Alberto Guadagnini (alberto.guadagnini@polimi.it)
Prof. Fabio Inzoli (fabio.inzoli@polimi.it)
Prof. Monica Riva (monica.riva@polimi.it)