In the eleventh edition of the Micropol & Ecohazard Conference 2019 congress held from October 20 to 24 in Seoul, the proposal presented by Prof. Francisco Omil of the Cretus Institute was approved, to organize the next Micropol congress in June 2021 at the University of Santiago de Compostela.
This prestigious biannual congress is part of the series of specialized congresses of the International Water Association (IWA). Its central theme is to study the presence, elimination and effects of microcontaminants in drinking and wastewater. Cities such as Zurich, Singapore, Vienna or Seoul (this year’s) have been the headquarters of the latest editions. In 2021, it will be Santiago de Compostela.
The presence of organic microcontaminants in drinking and wastewater, such as pharmaceuticals and xenobiotic compounds, with potential endocrine disruptive actions, is a topic that has been of concern to the scientific community for a few years. In the USC the Biogroup maintains an outstanding research activity since 2000 on the elimination of these compounds. In addition, the LIDSA group and the group that coordinates prof. Rafael Cela, ChromChem, have extensive experience in quantifying the presence of microcontaminants in water. Precisely, this last group published this week in the journal Addiction the results of monitoring for 7 years of the consumption of drugs detected through wastewater. The study monitored the waters of 26 cities in 14 European countries.