The use of sterol profiles, supported with other faecal source tracking methods, to apportion septic tanks contamination in rural catchments.

Identifying the origin of faecal pollution in water is needed for effective water management decisions to protect both human health and aquatic ecosystems. Traditionally used indicators of faecal contamination, such as E. coli, only indicate pollution from warm-blooded animals and not the specific source of contamination; hence, more source specific tracers are required.

An assessment of contamination fingerprinting techniques for determining the impact of domestic wastewater treatment systems on private well supplies.

Private wells in Ireland and elsewhere have been shown to be prone to microbial contamination with the main suspected sources being practices associated with agriculture and domestic wastewater treatment systems (DWWTS). While the microbial quality of private well water is commonly assessed using faecal indicator bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, such organisms are not usually source-specific, and hence cannot definitively conclude the exact origin of the contamination. This research assessed a range of different chemical contamination fingerprinting techniques (ionic ratios, artificial sweeteners, caffeine, fluorescent whitening compounds, faecal sterol profiles and pharmaceuticals) as to their use to apportion contamination of private wells between human wastewater and animal husbandry wastes in rural areas of Ireland.

Assessing the Impact of Vehicle Speed Limits and Fleet Composition on Air Quality Near a School.

Traffic is a major source of urban air pollution that affects health, especially among children. As lower speed limits are commonly applied near schools in many cities, and different governments have different policies on vehicle fleet composition, this research estimated how different speed limits and fleet emissions affect air quality near a primary school. Based on data of traffic, weather, and background air quality records in Dublin from 2013, traffic, emission, and dispersion models were developed to assess the impact of different speed limits and fleet composition changes against current conditions.

A land use regression model for explaining spatial variation in air pollution levels using a wind sector based approach.

Estimating pollutant concentrations at a local and regional scale is essential in environmental and health policy decision making. Here we present a novel land use regression (LUR) modelling methodology that exploits the high temporal resolution of fixed-site monitoring (FSM) to produce a national-scale air quality model for the key pollutant NO. The methodology partitions concentration time series from a national FSM network into wind-dependent sectors or "wedges".

National scale assessment of total trihalomethanes in Irish drinking water.

Ireland reported the highest non-compliance with respect to total trihalomethanes (TTHMs) in drinking water across the 27 European Union Member States for the year 2010. We carried out a GIS-based investigation of the links between geographical parameters and catchment land-uses with TTHMs concentrations in Irish drinking water. A high risk catchment map was created using peat presence, rainfall (>1400 mm) and slope (<5%) and overlain with a map comprising the national dataset of routinely monitored TTHM concentrations.