Water Pollution
INTRODUCTION
We are faced with many environmental issues today that have to be dealt with,
from the destruction of rainforests to the damage that is done to the ozone
layer. Some of these problems have some solutions; however, the unfortunate
thing is that some do not. The only way to prevent these types of problems is
to basically prevent them from occurring. Water pollution is a dilemma that
can be very harmful to both the people and the environment they live in.
Human beings are becoming less and less cautious when it comes to hazardous
materials that can easily be distributed in our living and breathing
environment. Oil spills as well as other occurrences containing harmful
substances are all over the world. Various methods are constantly being utilized
to improve living conditions considering environmental issues; nonetheless,
in my opinion the best way not to even be faced with these problems is to
prevent them in the first place.
Water supplies are consistently becoming contaminated. These water
supplies are used as drinking and washing water, which causes health hazards
due to the pollution existing in the waters. For instance, in the United States,
over 40% of the groundwater, which serves as drinking water for half the
population, is tainted by industrial and agricultural pollution, waste
disposal, and chemical wastes from petroleum and mining. After contamination,
it is extremely troublesome and costly to purify the ground water. We are
rapidly losing one of our most precious resources, but in many ways, we can
help preserve or underground water supply. Therefore, industries and businesses
have to be remarkably circumspect regarding the technique they use to handle
their waste disposals as well as other elements that might cause damage to
our environment. Although, they are not the only ones who must be careful,
everybody who lives on this planet must be concerned because a single problem
caused by one or two people can eventually affect the whole world, originating
a global enigma.
Water pollution is not a problem that only takes nature's beauty away,
but it also sabotages the living environment for all organisms. For instance,
fish as well as other living things in water such as shrimp, jellyfish, etc.
also die or even become extinct due to the extensive amount of water pollution
that exists in the seas and oceans. The poisonous substances that are found
in these waters cause a harsh lack of oxygen for these aquatic organisms
causing them to eventually die out. This pollution would also severely infect
water with different types of bacteria and diseases, this being the water that
we drink and wash with. Therefore, the disadvantages of water would gradually
transfer to us, causing horrible illnesses as well as other miserable conditions.
The purpose of this report is to outline the problem of water
contamination as well as its consequences. The effects of water pollution
will be discussed and how they influence the organisms living in these unhealthy
waters. Thereupon, some fundamental solutions will be reviewed in relation to
the methods that can be used in order to deal with this dominant global
matter. Hopefully, readers will be able to conceive this dilemma and how
everyone can aid in regards to going a step closer to put an end to it.
The following picture is an example of the kind of problems that water pollution
can cause.
THE PROBLEM
From the commencement of civilization, water has been used to carry
undesired garbage away. Rivers, streams, canals, lakes, and oceans are currently
used as containers for every imaginable type of pollution. Water has the
capacity to dissolve or break down many substances, especially organic
compounds, which decompose during continued contact with bacteria and enzymes.
Such non-biodegradable elements remain in water and can make it poisonous for
most forms of life. Even biodegradable pollutants can damage a water supply
for long periods of time. Thereupon, life within the water begins to suffer.
Lakes are especially vulnerable to pollution because they cannot cleanse themselves
as rapidly as rivers or oceans. Evidently, water pollution is a primary environmental
problem faced by the people of this planet. It is definitely as simple as the
beginning of civilization where people carelessly dumped their unwanted
materials in lakes and rivers; however, today we have to pay much attention
to these types of actions.
Pesticides and industrial wastes can kill water life. Workers in Germany collected dead fish from the Rhine River after the release of an extremely lethal pesticide triggered a massive fish-kill.
The silting of streams is one kind of water contamination. A heavy load of
silt kills fish indirectly by decreasing the quantity of oxygen and other
nutrients in water. Then, as the following water slows, silt is deposited on
streambeds. Reservoirs behind dams also fill with silt unless erosion is
stopped in watersheds above. Other kinds of water pollution have created
other problems. Many waterways are utilized as dumps for household and
industrial wastes. Some communities dump untreated sewage and garbage into
the nearest streams. Industries contaminate the waterways when they
discharge acids, chemicals, greases, oils, and organic matter into them. Such
materials impure drinking waters and put public health under jeopardy. They
destroy commercial fisheries. They also cause streams to become unusable for
recreational purposes. Leaks and spills from offshore oil wells and damaged
or wrecked oil tankers have been the cause for the widespread destruction of
marine life.
A common kind of water pollution is the effect cause by heavy concentrations
of nitrogen and phosphorus, which are used by plants for growth. The prevalent
use of agricultural fertilizers and household detergents containing these
elements has added large amounts of plant nutrients to many bodies of water.
In large quantities, nitrogen and phosphorus cause tiny water algae to bloom,
or grow fast. When the algae die, oxygen is needed to decompose them. This
created an oxygen deficiency in the water, which causes the death of many
aquatic animals. Plant life soon reduces the amount of open water. These events
speed up the process of aging and eventual drying up of the lake.
Sedimentation also taints water. It is the result of poor conservation
practices. Sediment fills water supply reservoirs and fouls power turbines
and irrigation pumps. It also diminishes the amount of sunlight that can sink
in the water. In the absence of sufficient sunlight, the aquatic plants that
normally furnish the water with oxygen fail to grow. Factories sometimes turn
waterways into open sewers by dumping oils, toxic chemicals, and other
harmful industrial wastes into them.
In mining and oil-drilling operations, corrosive acid wastes are poured into
the water. In recent years, municipal waste treatment plants have been built
to battle with water contamination. Some towns, however, still foul streams
by pouring crude sewage into them. Decaying tanks and cesspools, used where
sewers are not available, may also pollute the groundwater and adjacent streams,
sometimes with disease-causing organisms. Even the purified vapor from the
sewage plants can cause water pollution if it contains high concentrations of
nitrogen and phosphorus. Farm fertilizers in some regions fill groundwater with
nitrates, making the water unfit to drink. Agricultural runoff containing
dangerous pesticides and the oil, grime, and chemicals used to melt ice from
city streets also pollute waterways and streams.
In essence, modern industrial societies make enormous demands on some freshwater
lakes. Water is channeled from lakes to population centers for drinking and
bathing. It is used in a variety of manufacturing processes, for power
generation, as a coolant in nuclear power plants, for irrigation, and for
recreation. From many of these events has arisen the serious problem of water
pollution caused primarily by the return of unclean used water to its lake source,
as well as by the disposition of a large diversity of maleficent chemicals
and other waste matter into lakes.
SOURCES OF WATER POLLUTION AND CONTROL
The major sources of water pollution can be classified as municipal, industrial,
and agricultural. Municipal water pollution consists of wastewater from homes
and commercial establishments. For several years, the main goal of treating
municipal wastewater was simply to reduce its content of suspended solids,
oxygen-demanding materials, dissolved inorganic compounds (particularly
compounds of nitrogen and phosphorus), and harmful bacteria.
The characteristics of industrial wastewater can differ considerably
both within and among industries. The impact of industrial discharge depends
not only on their collective characteristics, such as biochemical oxygen
demand and the amount of suspended solids, but also on their content of specific
inorganic and organic substances.
This image represents the fact that our waters go through many towns and cities before they become treated, therefore, it is to our own advantage not to pollute the water.
Agriculture, including commercial livestock and poultry farming, is
the source of many organic and inorganic pollutants in surface waters and
groundwater. These contaminants involve both sediment from the erosion of
cropland and compounds of phosphorus and nitrogen that partially originate in
animal wastes and commercial fertilizers. Animal wastes are high in oxygen-demanding
material, phosphorus, and nitrogen, and they often provide shelter for
pathogenic organisms.
EFFECTS
As already mentioned, water pollution can do very many harms to organisms
living in water and lack of oxygen is just an example. Notable effects of water
pollution include those involved in human health. Nitrates in drinking water
can cause a disease in infants that sometimes result in death. Crops can
absorb cadmium in sludge-derived fertilizer; if ingested in adequate quantities,
the metal can cause an acute diarrheal disorder and liver and kidney damage.
The hazardous nature of inorganic substances such as mercury, arsenic, and
lead has long been known or strongly suspected.
Lakes are especially vulnerable to pollution. One problem, eutrophication,
happens when lake water becomes artificially enriched with nutrients causing
abnormal plant development. Runoff of chemical fertilizer can aid this. The
process of eutrophication can produce problems such as bad tastes and odours
and unsightly green scums of algae, as well as dense growth of rooted plants,
oxygen deficiency in the deeper waters and bottom sediments of lakes, and
other chemical changes such as condensation of calcium carbonate in hard waters.
Another problem, of growing concern in recent years, is acid rain, which has
left many lakes in the northeastern U.S. and Canada totally empty of life.
The effects of water pollution vary. They include poisonous drinking water,
poisonous food animals (due to these organisms having bio-accumulated toxins
from the environment over their life spans), unbalanced river and lake
ecosystems that cannot support full biological diversity any longer,
deforestation from acid rain, and many other effects. These consequences are,
of course, specific to the various contaminants. Some of the most dangerous
pollutants that have the most hazardous effects are petroleum, especially
from oil spills, radioactive substances from the wastes of uranium and thorium
mining and refining, from nuclear power plants, and from the industrial,
medical, and scientific use of radioactive materials. These types of materials
do the most harm, fundamentally because they contain the worst materials.
They turn water into a complete poisonous and dangerous liquid; hence,
factories and industries should make plenty of attempts to prevent these
harmful substances from entering lakes and rivers.
Another way that tainted materials in water can cause dilemmas is high temperatures.
Heat may be unnaturally added to streams and lakes in a number of ways, one of
which being toxic materials containing plenty of heat entering water. Lakes
and rivers containing harmful matter are then exposed to sunlight. Temperatures
begin to rise. As they flow into larger bodies of water, these in turn are
warmed. This occurrence can demolish fish and other aquatic organisms incapable
of tolerating the high temperatures.
Oil spills are a definite major concern when it comes to water pollution.
Organisms living in water can be intensely affected by oil spills. Depending
on the growth stages and time of year, marine organisms may be dramatically
affected by a spill or affected very little. For example, snails may lose
their ability to attach themselves to a rock for stability, and be swept away
and killed. Fish may ingest oil and depending on how the compounds react with
their individual cells, clog their gills. Crustaceans and fish eggs may be
affected by toxic materials found in even a thin layer of oil on the surface
of the water. In contrast, if the oil sinks into the water's sandy sediment,
or covers it beaches, some species (oysters, clams, mussels, smelt, and
herring) may not generate offspring. If they do, the offspring may be affected.
In some cases, nevertheless, fish may be defiant to the effects of oil in the
water due to their protective mucous membrane. Certain types of marine life
(flora on barnacles and some worms) can even benefit from the spill by attaching
themselves to a floating oil lump.
MARINE POLLUTION
Wastes that are discharged directly into U.S. marine waters are estimated
conservatively to exceed 45 million metric tons per year. About 80 percent of
this amount is waste produced by dredging, 10 percent is industrial waste,
and 9 percent is sewage sludge. The presence of toxic substances, the rapid
intake of pollutants by marine water animals, heavy deposits of materials on
the bottom environment near the shore, the excessive growth of unwanted organisms;
the combination of all these aspects has very serious consequences.
OIL SPILLS
These large-scale accidental releases of liquid petroleum products are an
important basis of pollution along shorelines. The most dramatic involve the
supertankers used for oil transport, but many other ships also spill oil, and
offshore drilling operations contribute a large share of the pollution. One
estimate is that of every million tons of oil shipped, one ton is spilled.
Some of the largest spills so far recorded consist of the tanker Amoco Cadiz
off the French coast in 1978 (1.6 barrels). The largest spill in the United
States (240,000 barrels) was that of the tanker Exxon Valdez in Prince William
Sound, Gulf of Alaska, in March 1989. Within a week of the incident, under
high winds, this spill had become a 6700-sq-km slick that endangered wildlife
and fisheries in the entire gulf area. The oil spills in the Persian Gulf in
1983, during the Iran-Iraq conflict, and in 1991, during the Persian Gulf War,
resulted in colossal damage to the entire region, especially to the marine
life.
SOLUTIONS
Water pollution is an issue where the best solution is prevention. In my perspective, every possible attempt must be made to stop hazardous contamination capable of doing extreme damage to the environment and its habitants. For instance, we can use more organic and less harmful materials to get our daily tasks done. Utilizing less chemical substances that everyone can do in order to reduce the amount of poisonous materials that enter our sewers and waterways.
Science provides many practical solutions to minimizing the present level at which pollutants are introduced into the environment and for cleaning up past problems. All of these solutions come with some cost. In our everyday lives, a great deal can be done to minimize pollution if we take care to recycle materials whose production creates pollution and if we act responsibly with household chemicals and their disposal. Additionally, there are choices we make each day that can also affect the quantity of pollutants our actions introduce to the environment. Heavily packaged foods, for example, contain boxes, cartons, bottles etc. made with polluting dyes, many of which are released from groundwater at municipal landfills.
In recent years, more stress has been placed on improving the means of disposal of the solid residues from municipal treatment processes. The basic methods of treating municipal wastewater fall into three stages: primary treatment, including gravel removal, screening, grinding, aggregation of the solids, and sedimentation. Secondary treatment, which requires oxidation of dissolved organic matter by means of using biologically active sludge, which is then filtered off; and tertiary treatment, in which advanced biological methods of nitrogen removal and chemical and physical techniques such as fine filtration and activated carbon adsorption are employed. The handling and disposal of solid residues can account for 25 to 50 percent of the capital and operational costs of a treatment plant.
Three options are available in controlling industrial wastewater. Control can take place at the point of generation within the plant; wastewater can be pretreated for discharge to municipal treatment systems; or wastewater can be treated completely at the plant and either reused or released directly into receiving waters. Wastes from commercial feeders are contained and disposed of on land; their fundamental threat to natural waters, thus, is via runoff and leaching. Control may involve setting basins for liquids, limited biological treatment in aerobic or anaerobic bodies of water, and a variety of other methods.
The foremost legislative basis for managing water pollution is the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1956, as amended by the Water Quality Act of 1965, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act revisions of 1972, and the Clean Water Act of 1977. Furthermore, ocean dumping is controlled by the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act of 1972. The 1972 amendments instituted strict controls and cleanup deadlines for industrial and municipal pollution, shifting the emphasis from the regulating of general water quality to the setting of precise standards for wastewater in particular. A system of issuing permits for discharges into U.S. waters was also created. The Clean Water Act of 1977 relaxed the deadlines of 1972 but added supplies to strengthen the destruction of toxic water pollutants.
In the end, there are many choices on the personal and societal level that we must make that affect the amount of pollution our town or country will be forced to live with. In essence, regarding the prevention of water pollution dilemmas, I believe the best way would in fact be to make suitable decisions. Most environmental issues, including water pollution, are extremely hard to fix after the incident has occurred. That is why we have to do everything in our power to preclude catastrophic things to occur, which everyone later would regret.
This is an image of the treatment waste water goes under before it enters lakes and rivers.
CONCLUSION
Since water plays such a vital role in the life on earth, good quality water is a precious resource. Often water quality is more important than water quantity. The quality of the water affects the use we make of it, but the reverse is also true. Once we use the water, we affect its quality. The explosion in human population and industrial activities, and the rate at which new chemicals and products are being developed and used-pose a global environmental threat. The natural decay processes in water bodies can no longer cope with these loads.
Water pollution has affected many people in many ways, more than they think. Contamination is very dangerous to not only animals but humans too. Oil pollution is a very unsafe problem in North America, especially in the U.S. Oil places a film on the water allowing no oxygen to get into the water. Many things are constantly being tried to stop serious water pollution such as oil spills etc. but more needs to be done. There are many causes for water pollution, which is why each one has to be thoroughly considered in order to stop more critical things to occur. Wars, conflicts, and inferior industries have already done more than enough in regards to harming our living and breathing environment, in contrast, they act as if they are not concerned. Both the government and people should become very heavily involved in this significant issue that can someday put the earth's public health under stupendous risk. On the whole, it is strictly to all organisms' drawback if the water we use daily someday becomes as dangerous as gasoline to drink.
This illustration represents the scene where waters enter lakes after being treated.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Department of Pollution Control. (1995). Water Pollution Control. http://ci.pocatello.id.us/wpc.html