Occurrence of halogenated furanones in US drinking waters

Chlorinated and brominated forms of MX (3-chloro-4(dichloromethyl)-5-hydroxy-2(5H)-furanone) were detected in the disinfected waters of six pairs of U.S. drinking water treatment plants, with MX as high as similar to 310 ng/L in finished water. The strength of this study is in its comparison between pairs of plants that drew water from the same or similar watersheds and treated the raw source water with two contrasting disinfection and/or treatment schemes. As expected, the brominated MX-analogues were produced in greater abundance than MX from raw source waters with high bromide concentrations. Disinfection of waters with free chlorine produced more MX-analogues than disinfection with monochloramine. Use of chloramines as the residual disinfectant appeared to stabilize MX-analogues once they were formed. Pretreatment with ozone and biologically active granular activated carbon minimized MX-analogue formation upon subsequent chlorination or chloramination, either because MX precursors were altered by ozone, removed by granular activated carbon, or degraded by biological filtration. Pretreatment with chlorine dioxide did not minimize MX-analogue formation. In plant effluent samples, MX and chloroform were positively correlated (molar R-2 0.7, N = 6). Similar formation patterns of MX-analogues, trihalomethanes, and haloacetic acids in these water treatment plants suggest that the three classes of disinfection byproduct follow a common formation mechanism from natural organic matter and chlorine.