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How important is keeping the water we use safe? Important enough that over 8,000 specialists met in Glasgow recently for the International Water Congress & Exhibition, the leading global event for water and allied professionals, covering the full water cycle. 

Adelle Holder, a third-year ARCS Pittsburgh Scholar, was more than happy to attend, share a poster, and be immersed in water safety discussions. She is working toward her PhD at the University of Pittsburgh in the Swanson School of Engineering, focused on Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research interest focuses on microbial communities present in drinking water distribution systems and their impact on public health.

As an undergraduate, she joined a summer research experience at Purdue University 

focused on environmental engineering. Long-term stagnation in pipe systems may not sound compelling, but Holder will remind you that during COVID, many buildings were shut down, and pipes were stagnant for a long time. As workers finally returned to the office, an obvious question for an environmental engineer is, “What was happening to the water quality after that? The government didn’t really know what to do, and one idea was to flush the system,” Holder said.

She asks you to consider, “Do you think that flushing the system actually works in that situation?”  It became the focus for her summer project: “Does flushing the system work or do anything to the microbial community within the pipes? How does it affect the end user?” Those questions and the research hooked her on the importance of environmental engineering, she says. 

At the Glasgow conference, Holder was introduced to people by her advisor, Dr. Sarah Haig, who did her PhD in Glasgow. Holder spoke with postdocs, other PhD students, industry leaders, people from other countries, and environmental protection agencies. 

“The biggest takeaway for me was that everyone there is interested in water, safe water, and water for everyone,” Holder says. “I was able to talk with so many people, network, and hear about research that I never would have heard about outside the conference. I got ideas for the project I’m working on now.” 

Holder’s poster at the conference described her two-year project, which focused on looking at showerhead filters. Showerhead filters are advertised as good for your skin and hair, but is that scientifically true? A shower lab in a basement at the University of Pittsburgh was used to test three popular filters. 

“We ran it for 12 weeks, examining what was coming out in the aerosols, the water, and eventually inside the filters,” Holder says. “The main takeaways from that study, especially when the filters were cracked open, were that inside the shower filters nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) and other opportunistic pathogens and bacteria were growing. They formed biofilms, just like what happens inside of pipes and shower hoses.”  

 “It’s something I don’t think manufacturers are thinking about. It’s not regulated,” Holder said.

Holder is about to begin a new project. 

“It’s a partnership with our local water treatment plant, which is looking at the whole treatment process and specifically the disinfection step,” Holder said. “The project will examine the main disinfectants used throughout the U.S., chlorine and chloramine.”

She will collect water samples at the treatment plant and take them to the lab to run experiments.