Differing decision-making priorities and risk assessment approaches across jurisdictions have produced variation in national implementation of European Union drinking water PFAS standards. Analysis of such differences reflects uncertainty around harder-to-remove compounds such as TFA, which complicates planning and investment in cost-effective drinking water solutions.

The European Union Drinking Water Directive set new limits for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) due to health concerns, prompting varied implementation across member states. An analysis of these implementations reveals that while most adopt the sum of PFAS substances limit, diverse approaches may hinder consistent protection and challenge compliance, especially regarding trifluoroacetic acid.

Industrial wastewater contains both dissolved salts and valuable metals, yet existing technologies rarely achieve water reuse and resource recovery simultaneously. Programming electrode potential can direct the fate of dissolved ions, enabling desalination and selective metal recovery within a single electrochemical platform.

Electrochemical ion pumping enables tunable, simultaneous desalination and selective heavy-metal recovery from complex industrial brines by precisely controlling the electrode potential to couple capacitive ion removal with targeted metal electrodeposition.

Nitritation depends on selectively suppressing nitrite-oxidizing bacteria. Research now shows that quorum sensing reshapes how ammonia- and nitrite-oxidizers respond to inhibition, revealing a hidden layer of metabolic control in nitrogen removal.

Machine learning is the key to uncovering where populations across the globe are at risk from manganese in their groundwater-sourced drinking water.

Nitritation is limited by the difficulty of suppressing nitrite-oxidizing bacteria, the mechanisms of which are clear. This study shows that quorum sensing drives altruistic self-inactivation in Nitrospira, favouring ammonia oxidizers and stabilizing nitritation.

This Review synthesizes how ultrahigh- and high-resolution mass spectrometry has decoded the molecular-level responses of dissolved organic matter to anthropogenic drivers, providing practical recommendations to advance its utility for examining anthropogenic impacts on aquatic systems.

Uranium extraction from natural waters is limited by stable uranium complexes and weak adsorbent interactions. Metalloporphyrin-based porous polymers with triangular binding pockets achieve >96% removal and capacities of up to 79.8 mg g⁻¹.