Micropollutants are small, harmful, and prevalent. The common usage of drugs like painkillers, anti-inflammatories and other chemicals like organic dyes leads to an increased concentration of these compounds in wastewater. In addition to medication (e.g. diclofenac), micropollutants derive from pesticides, industry chemicals and much more. To date, wastewater treatment plants cannot filter out these compounds efficiently. This causes rising concentrations of environmentally harmful substances in the waters around treatment plants, directly resulting in increased mortality of zebra mussels and acid burns on cornea of trout. As a result, many fish species have become extinct, with many more to be impacted if no intervention occurs.

But three iGEM teams are focused on solving this problem by utilizing laccases. We are from Darmstadt, Kaiserslautern, and Stuttgart and all of us see these micropollutants as a huge problem impacting our planet. In this Partnership webpage you can find a comparison of our three projects and useful literature recommendations or expert excerpts from interviews we’ve conducted. We would be glad if we inspire you to improve our projects in future endeavors and help you with our advice.

To get a good entry into the field of wastewater treatment the picture explains the current steps of a typical wastewater treatment in Germany. Most of these steps are the same in different countries, which you can see in our comparison of the wastewater meetings with other countries. Just hover your mouse over each tank and discover the structure of sewage treatment plants.