Michigan Judges Side with 3M

Michigan Judges Side with 3M

Ah, Michigan, the place where lakes are great and water regulations... a tad slippery. Michigan's rules for tackling PFAS in groundwater just took a dive, courtesy of their Court of Appeals. Turns out, the state's Department of EGLE (Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy) missed their math classes. They didn't quite account for the business costs while laying down the PFAS regulations back in 2020. While Michigan's legal tussle with 3M brews over this, don't reach for the bubbly just yet—Uncle Sam is poised to step in by year's end with even stricter PFAS limits that could make Michigan's look like child's play.

Orthophosphate? Never Heard of Her!

When researching for this week’s newsletter, we came across this article discussing why residents of Haysville, Kansas might experience milky-looking tap water. Curiosity got the best of us so we double-clicked and read that it’s because they're launching an “Orthophosphate Treatment System.”

What the h*ck is Orthophosphate? It's not the latest superfood smoothie ingredient (that’s what we thought at first). Think of Orthophosphate as that guy who tries to play peacekeeper at a heated family reunion. In the water treatment world, it's a chemical added to your tap water to prevent metals like lead and copper from leaching from pipes.

Here’s a nice visual provided by Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority:

Filters Made of… Wood?

In the world of water treatment, innovation tends to flow (pun absolutely intended). The folks over at the University of British Columbia's BioProducts Institute really made a splash with their "bioCap" filter. This green machine, crafted from wood dust and tannins (compounds found in plants), is showing off with its 99.9% microplastic trapping abilities. If you've been living under a pebble and aren't in the know, microplastics are like that relative that shows up uninvited – they're in nearly all tap water. And, in the grand battle against these unwanted guests, "bioCap" might just be the game-changer, adaptable for cozy homes and massive municipal systems alike. Best of all, it’s plant-based, so Mother Nature gives it two green thumbs up.

Arsenic vs. Smart Bacteria

Eric Sorge, Brown University's soon-to-be senior and probable contender for "Most Likely to Outsmart Your Brita", is giving water purification an academic twist. Paired with Professor Vicki Colvin, Sorge is flirting with synthetic biology, aiming to train bacteria to have a penchant for toxic arsenic consumption. You know, traditional arsenic removal is a bit like that old coffee machine in your office – it works, but it's not efficient, and you're never quite sure what's in the pot. Especially for those countryside folks leaning on private wells, Sorge's potential game changer traps the arsenic in these specially trained bacteria, and then filters out the little critters. GMOs might give some people the jitters, but Sorge sees them as Mother Nature's toolkit for a greener tomorrow.