Huh, I was under the impression we already did this
My understanding is that most municipalities make the water safe enough to put back into the environment, but not to the point of making it potable.
We use it for irrigation but not drinking.
Some municipalities do I thought, fairly positive the town next to where I lived did that.
Sounds like a great way to get prions.
How about treating the sewage, returning it to the rivers or using it for gray water and then desalinating for drinking and irrigation instead?
Prions are way too large to pass the reverse-osmois membranes.
That’s a relief! Thanks for posting this.
You’re very right about prions. But there’s more passing through reverse osmosis membranes than meets the eye.
Size cut-off is not the sole trans-membrane transport process. The material of some membranes allow the diffusion of some molecules - roughly, hydrophobic membrane materials allow diffusion of hydrophobic molecules… its more specific than this, though.
There are targeted studies to assess the removal of micropullutants that show that some micropollutants can pass membranes even though their size is bigger than what would reasonably be expected to be retained.
I don’t know anybody studying this with broad spectrum techniques that uncover unknown-unknowns.
