Archive News

March 11, 2021Rare earth metals such as cerium and gadolinium are increasingly entering wastewater from industry, but also from hospitals. This is shown by Eawag’s investigations at 63 wastewater treatment plants in Switzerland.

March 9, 2021Monitoring of wastewater samples has the potential to provide a further indicator – alongside the number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths – to track the course of the pandemic. With support from the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), an existing research project is now being expanded from two to six wastewater treatment plants.

March 3, 2021Researchers have discovered a unique bacterium that lives inside a unicellular eukaryote and provides it with energy. Unlike mitochondria, this so-called endosymbiont derives energy from the respiration of nitrate, not oxygen.

March 3, 2021New pharmaceuticals are being launched on the market all the time. It is of course their effectiveness in people’s health that is of central importance here, but at some point, their active ingredients or traces of them wind up in the environment, where they can have negative consequences. A large-scale EU project in which Eawag is also participating is now trying to help ensure that possible environmental impacts of pharmaceuticals are recognised by the pharmaceutical industry and the relevant approval bodies in the early stages of a drug’s development.

March 2, 2021In Lake Constance, sticklebacks are occupying increasingly varied habitat types – in recent years even including the open and deep waters of the lake. In an Eawag review undertaken as part of the “SeeWandel” project, these uniquely diverse ecological adaptations are explained in terms of renewed contact between three stickleback lineages – including one originating from the Baltic region, whose genetic material is as yet rarely observed in other Swiss lakes.

February 25, 2021Copepods (minute crustaceans with paddle-like feet) can differentiate between disturbances in water generated by nearby organisms and turbulence caused by wind or waves – an ability which helps them to find mates. It had previously been assumed that turbulent conditions would impede the quest for mates.

February 23, 2021A new fact sheet highlights the opportunities and challenges associated with greywater.

February 18, 2021A new simulation study shows that climate change risks significantly altering water temperature, ice cover and mixing of many Swiss lakes. Mid altitude lakes are especially under pressure, running the risk of completely losing ice cover and no longer fully mixing twice per year. Such a change would have fundamental consequences for the functioning of lake ecosystems.

February 17, 2021Sam Derrer has been head of vocational training at Eawag for ten years, so he knows exactly how varied training is and how apprentices are encouraged and challenged at the research institute.

February 12, 2021A community of sulfur bacteria grows in the northern basin of Lake Tanganyika and plays a key role in the lake's nitrogen cycle. With climate change, the deep blooms could expand southward, a new study shows. This could have drastic consequences for regional fisheries.