Papa, MatteoParedes Barro, LidiaFeretti, DonatellaViola, Gaia Claudia VivianaMazzoleni, GiovannaSteimberg, NathaliePedrazzani, RobertaLema Rodicio, Juan ManuelOmil Prieto, FranciscoCarballa Arcos, Marta2021-08-032021-08-032021Environmental Engineering Research 2021; 26(3): 200153. https://doi.org/10.4491/eer.2020.1531226-1025http://hdl.handle.net/10347/26673The research on emerging pollutants in wastewater has become a worldwide issue of increasing environmental concern, especially considering the growing interest in wastewater reuse. However, the latter implies additional post-treatment after the conventional activated sludge processes, in order to produce a safer effluent. Our work aimed at determining the efficiency of reducing the toxicity associated with organic micropollutants (OMPs) in secondary wastewater effluents, using 3 different post-treatment technologies (granular activated carbon (GAC), sand biofiltration and UV irradiation): in particular, target chemical analysis of the OMPs most commonly founded in wastewater was coupled with effect-based assays (estrogenicity and mutagenicity). While chemical analysis assessed satisfactory performances for all 3 technologies in the abatement of selected OMPs, biological assays evidenced another perspective: both GAC and sand biofilters were significantly able to make the estrogenic load plummet; however, the UV system was ineffective in estrogenicity abatement, and its effluent exhibited also a slight mutagenicity, likely due to photo-transformation by-products. These results indicate that a synergistic combination of chemical analysis and biological assays can drive to a proper gauging of post-treatment technologies, taking into account not only the removal of OMPs, but also their overall toxicityeng© 2021 Korean Society of Environmental Engineers (open-access): This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/EstrogenicityGranular activated carbonMutagenicityOrganic micropollutantsSand filtrationUV irradiationjournal article10.4491/eer.2020.1532005-968Xopen access