As the modern society is rapidly developing and people become affluent in materials, many new chemical compounds in different forms of products (e.g., antibiotics, pesticides, detergents, personal care products and plastic goods) are produced, used, and disposed of to the environments. Some of them are persistently having a harmful impact on the environment and mimicking endocrine properties; in general they are present in the environment at low concentrations, so they are called organic pollutants. These organic micropollutants flow to sewage treatment plants via different routes. In this study, the generation characteristics, exposure pathways, detection levels, and environmental impacts of organic micropollutants were critically reviewed. In addition, currently available risk assessment methods and management systems for the compounds were reviewed. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), for example, has monitored organic micropollutants and set the monitoring and management of some of the compounds as a priority. To effectively manage organic micropollutants in sewer systems, therefore, we should first monitor organic micropollutants of potential concern and then make a watch list of specific substances systematically, as described in guidelines on listing water pollutants in industrial wastewater.

The dechlorination processes and efficiencies of PCBs contained in transformer dielectric oils were investigated on three commercial-treatment companies. Alkaline dispersion method was used for dechlorination of PCBs mainly using molten metallic sodium or potasium hydroxide with PEG, and its dechlorination efficiency to whole congeners of PCBs was 98.94% on average. Homologues of highly-chlorinated biphenyls showed better efficiencies than those of less chlorinated ones, especially mono-chlorinated biphenyl in para-position (#2) was about 37 times enriched after chemical treatment. Co-planar PCBs' dechlorination efficiency was averaged as high as 99.78%, but 3,3',4,4'-TeCB was relatively low as 96.5%. It was suggested for better dechlorination efficiency to remove the water in transformer oil prior to chemical reaction and to stir the reagents more rapidly when using alkaline dispersion method.