Assessing environmental impacts of constructed wetland effluents for vegetable crop irrigation

The objective of this study was to monitor and assess environmental impacts of reclaimed wastewater(RW), used for irrigation of vegetable crops, on soil, crop quality and irrigation equipment. During 2013,effluents of a horizontal sub-surface flow constructed treatment wetland (TW) system, used for tertiarytreatment of sanitary wastewater from a small rural municipality located in Eastern Sicily (Italy), werereused by micro-irrigation techniques to irrigate vegetable crops. Monitoring programs, based on in situand laboratory analyses were performed for assessing possible adverse effects on water-soil-plant systemscaused by reclaimed wastewater reuse. In particular, experimental results evidenced that Escherichia colicontent found in RW would not present a risk for rotavirus infection following WHO (2006) standards.Irrigated soil was characterized by a certain persistence of microbial contamination and among thestudied vegetable crops, lettuce responds better, than zucchini and eggplants, to the irrigation with lowquality water, evidencing a bettering of nutraceutical properties and production parameters