Science

Too often, in my less than humble opinion, discussions of environmental science include conditional words like "should" and "could."

Often these words are confused with "is" and "are." This confusion has resulted in vast tragedy.

I've been hearing my entire adult life about, for one example, what so called "renewable energy" could do "by XXXX" where XXXX refers to some year, many now in the past in my lifetime. Nonetheless, despite all the "coulds" and "shoulds" climate change is getting worse faster than ever and the use of dangerous fossil fuels is at the highest level ever observed. So called "renewable energy" did nothing to prevent this outcome, is doing nothing to address this outcome, and despite the current utilization of "should" and "could" rhetoric which varies not a whit from that used in the 1980's, will not do anything to address climate change.

There are many similar examples.

I know of no filtration scheme that can address a universe of halogenated organics cheaply and efficiently, all "should" and "could" notwithstanding. If one existed, it would be in use somewhere.

The approach I would recommend, radiolysis, is sometimes utilized in UV schemes, but these generate halogen radicals, and without sufficient energy and time, organics are seldom completely mineralized. Gamma radiation would be better.

More lives are saved by chlorination to be sure, than are lost to exposure of halogenated organics, which is not to say that chlorination is risk free. It isn't as the paper describes.