The handling of wastewater, treatment, reuse, and discharge poses a global challenge. Produced by industrial and urban sources, every country has its own regulations for effluent treatment in place. In the US, the regulations on wastewater handling can be found in the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, commonly known as the Clean Water Act.
Specific effluent guidelines for specific industries are listed in the Code of Federal regulations. The CFR also gives limit values for the maximum allowed concentrations of several pollutants for direct discharge to surface waters with permits from the National Pollutant Elimination System (NPDES) and for indirect discharge to publicly owned treatment works (POTW) which are regulated under the National Pretreatment Program. The EPA has set limit values based on industry and treatment types.
This report describes the principal methodology for the analysis of wastewater samples using ICP-OES in compliance with the standard method EPA 200.7.