{"id":5278,"date":"2023-01-06T16:58:29","date_gmt":"2023-01-06T15:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/uncategorized\/scientific-american-slaking-the-worlds-thirst-with-seawater-dumps-toxic-brine-in-oceans\/"},"modified":"2023-03-09T09:50:41","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T08:50:41","slug":"scientific-american-slaking-the-worlds-thirst-with-seawater-dumps-toxic-brine-in-oceans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/en\/to-know-to-take-action\/scientific-american-slaking-the-worlds-thirst-with-seawater-dumps-toxic-brine-in-oceans\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientific American : Slaking the World\u2019s Thirst with Seawater Dumps Toxic Brine in Oceans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Rising populations and dwindling water supplies have caused many countries, such as the Middle East, Australia, California and China, to turn to the oceans and other salt waters as a source of drinking water. But desalination plants are energy intensive and produce a potentially environmentally harmful waste product called &#8220;sludge&#8221; (composed of concentrated salt and chemical residues), which is discharged into the ocean, injected underground or spread on land.<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"640\" src=\"https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/usine-bord-de-mer-1024x640.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2087\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/usine-bord-de-mer-1024x640.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/usine-bord-de-mer-300x188.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/usine-bord-de-mer-768x480.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/usine-bord-de-mer-1536x960.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/usine-bord-de-mer-2048x1280.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Despite the ecological risks, &#8220;there was no complete assessment of the sludge, including the amount produced,&#8221; says Manzoor Qadir, deputy director of UNESCO&#8217;s Institute on Water, Environment and Health. So he and his colleagues calculated this amount and found that it was 50% higher than the rough estimate previously put forward by the desalination industry. Indeed, that would be enough to cover Florida with a foot of sludge each year.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button has-custom-font-size has-medium-font-size\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-white-color has-text-color wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/slaking-the-worlds-thirst-with-seawater-dumps-toxic-brine-in-oceans\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Read article<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rising populations and dwindling water supplies have caused many countries, such as the Middle East, Australia, California and China, to turn to the oceans and other salt waters as a source of drinking water. But desalination plants are energy intensive and produce a potentially environmentally harmful waste product called &#8220;sludge&#8221; (composed of concentrated salt and chemical residues), which is discharged into the ocean, injected underground or spread on land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-to-know-to-take-action"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5279,"href":"https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5278\/revisions\/5279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seawards.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}