I. " Brush your teeth with the best toothpaste.
Then rinse your mouth with industrial waste.' Water pollution is a historical problem: In Europe: Hungary & water supplies: See copy of Chart handed out in class From UNEP: Even in n the USA: Today water pollution continues
as a major problem in spite of the Clean Water Act of more than 25 years
ago as evidenced by the following : Nationwide the number of fish consumption advisories rose by 26 percent from 1995 to 1996 to a total of 2,193. Since 1993, there has been a 72 percent increase. The four toxics responsible for over 90 percent of all the nation's advisories were mercury, PCBs, dioxins,and DDT. EPA estimates that 160,000 factories dump 57,000 tons of toxic organic chemicals and 68,000 tons of toxic metals into the U.S. coastal waters each year. In the U.S., sewage treatment plants dump 5.9 trillion gallons of wastewater into coastal waters each year. Not all of the toxins that continue to poison public waters are discharged directly into the water either. For example, in the Great Lakes, 58 to 89 percent of the PCBs and 95 percent of the lead in the upper lakes (Superior, Michigan and Huron) come from the atmosphere. Air deposition accounted for up to 82 percent of the PCBs entering Massachusetts Bay, and 80 percent of the mercury and 34 percent of the PCBs entering Delaware Bay The Clean Water Act of 1972 has never adequately
addressed the problem of polluted runoff ( relative to point sources)
, now the number-one cause of pollution in the nation's waters. Each
time it rains, water runs off the land and picks up toxic pesticides
and fertilizers from farm fields and lawns, heavy metals and oils from
cars and trucks, manure and microbes from animal feedlots, poisonous
chemicals and metals from mining sites, and sediment from construction
sites, farms and timber operations. Three and a quarter million tons
of oil enter the oceans of the world each year.
|
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What are the
major water pollutants?
1. Sediment and suspended matter are the number one water pollutant
based by weight
1: Levels nationally
have risen rapidly due to accelerated erosion, construction & mining.
Cloudy
waters:
- reduce ability of organisms to find food,
- reduce photosynthesis, including that of important aquatic plants which sustain the ecosystems,
- clogs gills of fish and filters of filter feeders orgnanisms including shellfish
- carries pesticides, bacteria, metals and other toxins into the waterways and increases sediment loads,
- disturbs exisitn bottom sediments which are the feeding & spawning grounds of fish,
- silt fills lakes, reservoirs, harbors, an expensive and dangerous problem when flooding occurs
.Solution: actually quite simple.... this action is being implemented in many states now including MD......
How can this be solved?
Inorganics:
Published November 1, 2004 Bangalore set to choke under huge e-waste
Feedback(BANGALORE) As IT firms continue to swamp India's technology hub of
Bangalore, the city is starting to choke under a heap of e-waste generated
from obsolete computers and discarded electronic components.
Environmentalists and officials say the waste contains more than 1,000 toxic
substances harmful to human beings and the environment.
'If we do not wake up now, in the next five years it will boomerang on us,'
said Bakul Rao, a consultant with the Environment Management and Policy Research
Institute, a research body set up by Karnataka state's Pollution Control Board.
The institute says that next year about 1,000 tonnes of plastics, an equivalent
amount of iron, 300 tonnes of lead, 0.23 tonne of mercury, 43 tonnes of nickel
and 350 tonnes of copper will be generated as e-waste in Bangalore.
'This figure will increase ten-fold in 2020 when Bangalore will generate one-third
of the state's e-waste,' Ms Rao told AFP. 'The findings are quite alarming
as there are no regulations and no scientific disposal systems.'
a. Toxic metals: the impacts of heavy metals are well known
- Cadmium: & Mercury & Chromium result in a variety of diseases including cancers, thinning of bones, impacts on fetus development, mutations;
- Lead affects the cytochrome oxidases for ATP formation, the Cytochrome 450 - MFO systems, which can lead to diminished IQ, affect heart and blood pressure, hand-eye coordination, altered behavior and many more,
- Arsenic is known to induce cancer, liver, kidney, blood and nervous system damage
For more on inorganics, see the listing of metals/inorganics below whose presence are required to be tested by local authorities in municipal water supplies.
b. Salts- salinity is the total content of dissolved minerals. Sources include irrigation, domestic & industrial wastes, mines, small dumps which evaporate & concentrate plus snow control.
Hardness of 100 ppm+. affect taste, long term effects on people with heart & kidney disease. Enough salts have entered the Chesapeake Bay from snow/ice removal events that efforts are being made to find substitutes
Solutions? Phytoremediation or plants that can pick up toxic metals and molecules....
A recent research report shows that bracken ferns, one of the few ferns that does well in sunny areas and is quite hardy, accumulates arsenic in phenomenal amounts. It accumulates the metal in its' fronds, which means that older leaves can be cropped as needed to remove the metal, and leave the plant rhizome intact for further growth. There is the potential that this plant prosper not only in moist areas, but also in near aqueous environments, which means it may be used for treating contaminated water supplies.
Other plants have already been used to clarify water supplies of metals, radioactive compounds, and even organic wastes. This applied area of study is called phytoremediation and is being used commercially to deal with industrial wastes and contaminated areas along with bioremediation of compounds by bacterial and fungi.
Disease causing agents include viruses and bacteria, protozoa, worms and now dinoflagellates and diatoms that either enter from domestic sewage and animal wastes or thrive in conditions which give them a competitive edge.
| The extent of the problem: More than one billion people worldwide drink unsafe water, A total of 3.4 million people, mostly children, die every year from water-related diseases from drinking, swimming in or washing clothes in polluted water. Diseases include malaria, diarrhea and guinea worm. |
This is to be expected in LDC's, but does the US also have problems with parasites? read the article below...
| REPORT
CONCLUDES MICROBES ENDANGER U.S. WATERS Americans
have been busy protecting their waters from chemical pollution, but
microbes such as viruses and bacteria pose a much greater threat. Such
dangerous organisms include E. coli O157, cryptosporidium,giardia, hepatitis
A and pfiesteria, the report, from the American Society for Microbiology,
said. "Control of water pollution in the United States over the past
two decades has focused on chemical risks, overshadowing the significant
risks associated with microbial pollutants," Much
of the contamination comes from the practice of pumping human waste
into rivers or oceans, or letting them filter into groundwater. "A small
drop of fecal matter can contain millions of these microorganisms,"
the report said. "There are approximately 25 million septic
tanks in the United States, receiving 175 billion gallons of wastewater
that could contaminate ground and surface waters with viruses and other
pathogens," it added. It said viruses had been found in 20 percent
of groundwaters tested nationwide. Sewage treatment plants are supposed to filter out or destroy microorganisms, but do not always succeed, the report adds. "Thus the wastewaters released could still contain enough pathogenic microorganisms to threaten human health," it says. Joan Rose, a marine biologist at the University of South Florida who helped write the report, said she found nasty bugs sometimes present in feces wind up right offshore within 12 to 24 hours of being flushed. The report called for coordinated national action by the EPA, the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies. "There is a critical need for an integrated national initiative on the microbial quality of water and on risk assessment as related to public health," it concluded. Source: Reuters Now consider this is the situation where water is treated... what is it like in countries as in Africa where llittle water is treated? |
Plant nutrients: fertilizing water with mineralized nutrients including both phsophorous and nitrogen.
a. Eutrophication-
primary problem with phosphorous fertilization: is an overly rapid growth
of blue-green bacteria or in some cases larger plants, which out compete more
friendly phytoplankton, and results in oxygen loads dropping as photosynthetic
production is overshadowed by organismal need for oxygen for respiration &
growth. Net result is all other non-photosynthetic organisms suffer or die
out.
Some examples include......
What have we achieved in Europe so far?http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/1vi.html
Inputs to rivers
European directives on the treatment of sewage and use of phosphate free detergents
have led to reductions in the inputs of phosphorous into our rivers and seas.
However phosphorous concentrations are still high in coastal waters and it
appears that phosphorous stored in sediments from earlier inputs is now
slowly being released back into the water. Nitrate based fertiliser
use has declined in Europe since the 1980's but nitrogen inputs to rivers
from agricultural sources are still high.
Inputs to the atmosphere
Although there has been a general decline in emissions of air pollutants,
levels of nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere are still high. Catalytic
converters on new cars have reduced nitrogen oxide emissions but there has
also been an increase in road travel which has partially offset the reductions
in emissions per car. There has also been a decrease in ammonia emissions
due to better management of animal wastes but we still have a long way to
go to reach the targets which have already been set. One of the major
problems with air pollution is that many species travel a long way from the
place they are emitted to the place they are deposited. This may be
in a different country, so we need European wide or even global action to
reduce atmospheric inputs to coastal waters and this is politically difficult
to achieve.
Black Sea: The most significant process degrading the Black Sea has been the massive over-fertilization of the sea by compounds of nitrogen and phosphorus, largely as a result of agricultural, domestic and industrial sources. This over-fertilization produces a phenomenon called eutrophication which has changed the structure of the Black Sea ecosystem. The nitrogen and phosphorus compounds enter the Black Sea from sources from the 17 countries in its drainage basin, particularly through rivers. It is estimated that the six Black Sea countries contribute about 70% of the total amount of the substances flowing to the Black Sea as waste from human activities. Some of this amount and almost all of the remaining 30% (from the other eleven non-coastal countries) enter the Sea via the Danube River.
5. Organic chemicals: Over 700 organic compounds can be found in drinking waters throughout the US.
In USA quick look at the chart below gives some indication of the extent of water pollution due to chemicals both from industry and residences entering coastal waters. This map does not include data on chemicals found in well drinking water due to pesticides and other industrial wastes entering the ground water supplies. Recent reports which have studied deaths of mammals in the oceans indicate traces of high blood pressure medication among others, which eventually all wash into the ocean and are taken in by the animals.
More Arctic pollution found
Arctic pollution is so widespread that no species is immune .....By Environment
Correspondent Alex Kirby
Five years of research by a team of international scientists has found evidence
of new chemical contamination throughout the Arctic.
The scientists work for the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP),
set up in 1991 by eight Arctic countries.
Their report, based on research from 1991 to 1996, expresses concern that
there are still too many gaps in our understanding of the pollution threats
to the Arctic ecosystem.
But the London-based journal Pesticides News says the team identified persistent
organic pollutants (POPs) as the main concern.
Pervading the environment
POPs are chemical substances which persist in the environment, accumulate
in the food chain, and threaten adverse effects on human health and the environment.
All the POPs considered by the AMAP researchers have been found in air, snow,
water and/or wildlife in the Arctic.
Contaminants travel long distances to reach the ArcticAir monitoring in the
region has found that the levels of two POPs, lindane and chlordane, show
that they must have been carried there from the places where they had been
used in the mid-latitudes of north America, Europe and Asia.
Exceptionally high levels of one POP, HCH (a mixture of alpha, beta, gamma
and delta hexachlorocyclohexanes) were found in Russian river water, especially
from the Ob in north central Russia.
DDT is still widespread in the Arctic, although in many countries it is restricted
or has been abandoned.
It is still widely used in many parts of the tropics to control mosquitoes.
Recent studies of impacts of pesticides in human toxicology show that it is the interaction of multiple chemicals at low levels ( even those levels considered relatively safe) that may cause permanent damage especially in young, developing children. It is rapidly growing tissue, especially that of the nervous system, and immune system which is most likely to be affected by these organics.
Here, the best solution is not cleanup after release, but prevention of the chemicals from entering the water system in the first place.
Oils, gasoline:Tanker accidents & blowouts contribute to this problem in acute ways but some say as much as 90% comes from runoff/dumping by cities, their roadways and industries in a low chronic fashion.
Effects:
1. Volatiles : After a spill, low-boiling aromatic compounds like benzene & toluene are the primary cause of immediate deaths. In warm water they evaporate 1-2 days;in cold waters it may take up to 1 week
2. Floating tar-like globs adhere to birds, otters, seals, rocks etc. Destroys natural insulation, buoyancy, Animal drown or die due to loss of body heat. Bacteria break down globs in weeks, months or in cold waters years.
3. Heavy oil sinks to bottom of waters or wash into estuaries. These masses kill bottom dwelling organisms like crabs, oysters, etc.
Biological effects
:
Toxicity of Oil Spills:
| Organisms |
Routes of Exposure |
Response |
| Birds |
1. Contact |
decrease in water repellency and body insulation leading to hypothermia |
| decrease in buoyancy |
||
| 2. Ingestion |
anemia, pneumonia, kidney and liver damage |
|
| decreased growth, egg production and egg viability |
||
| altered blood chemistry |
||
| 3. PAHs passing through egg shell |
decrease in hatching |
|
| abnormal and stunted growth |
||
| Marine Mammals |
1. Inhalation |
damage to respiratory surfaces and mucous membranes |
| 2. Surficial exposure |
temporary decrease in feeding by baleen whales |
|
| eye mucous membrane affected |
||
| fur insulated animals experience hypothermia |
||
| 3. Ingestion |
kidney failure, intestinal lining destruction, neural disorder and bioaccumulation |
|
| Pelagic Species- swimming species |
1. Contact |
in fish: increased breathing rates |
| 2. Ingestion |
liver effects |
|
| 3. Egg exposure |
decrease in swimming performance |
|
| slow initial development after hatching |
||
| increased morphological abnormalities |
Another Example of oil contamination
CANADA TARGETS OCEAN OIL DUMPERS
Canada's coast guard and other federal agencies are escalating their fight against clandestine, deliberate oil spills that are killing tens of thousands of seabirds annually in busy shipping lanes off Newfoundland. Aerial surveillance is being increased, and authorities want to step up the pace of prosecutions and fines for the owners and operators of the ships.
The coast guard estimates that oil spills annually kill 60,000 to 100,000 of the roughly 10 million seabirds that congregate off the Newfoundland coast each winter. Although the individual spills usually are small, the toll they inflict every three to four years equals the number of birds killed in the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
Terry Harvey, manager of the coast guard's oiled wildlife project, said many of the spills are ordered by the captains of commercial ships to minimize the cost of pumping oily waste from their bilges when they reach port. "This is usually a willful act of deliberate polluting," Harvey said Tuesday. "The birds die horribly -- they can no longer feed themselves. They come ashore, starving to death and freezing to death, and hope for rehabilitation is lost."
b. Plastics: Studies indicate each year- 2 million sea birds & 100,000 marine animals (whales, seals, dolphins) die when they ingest/entangled in plastic mesh. Merchant ships dump 450,000 plastic containers overboard every DAY ----US ships are responsible for 1/3 of trash thrown into ocean.
Oxygen demanding wastes:
Waters 'enriched' with
wastes or nutrients from human, domestic or wildlife are likely candidates
for oxygen depletion.
Rapid microbial growth spurred on by excess nutrient availability requires
oxygen - lots of oxygen. The net result of this feeding frenzy is that the
oxygen supply once available for all organisms, large and small, is now a
limited resource.
Organisms which require lots of oxygen for their high metabolic rates. esepcially
fast moving fish, are the hardest hit. Freely mobile organisms which can,
will move out of these zones, but sessile life including filter feeders and
even higher plants, with little means for transport will likely lose out,
forming 'lifeless' zones.
These dead zones are found not only in The Gulf of Mexico....but also in our own Chesapeake Bay has it own version: note the black area below indicating still another aquatic mortuary...
Indicator: Extent to
which dissolved oxygen levels below 5 mg/l (Maryland's water quality criteria)
contribute to waters' not meeting designated uses.
The level of available oxygen makes a large difference in terms of what species
can survive; low oxygen levels support when we consider 'trashy' fish while
high oxygen availability fosters conditions for "desirable" fish.
7.Radioactive wastes and substances:
Among Russia's most important environmental problems:
* Water pollution is the most serious concern. Less than half of Russia's
population has access to safe drinking water. While water pollution from industrial
sources has diminished because of the decline in manufacturing, municipal
wastes increasingly threaten key water supply sources, and nuclear
contamination could leach into key water sources as well. The head
of Russia's environmental protection committee estimates that the cost of
raising the quality of Russia's entire drinking water supply to official standards
could be as high as $200 billion.
Nuclear waste and chemical munitions contamination is so extensive and costly to reverse that remediation efforts are likely to continue to be limited largely to merely fencing off affected areas.
| CERRIE was set up in 2001 and includes a dozen experts from the
government's National Radiological Protection Board, the nuclear industry,
universities and environmental groups. The impact of Chernobyl, submarine explosions, nuclear emissions in
countries which use nuclear power is not trivial. In India and other
less developed countries, poor design of nuclear electric plants means
regular contamination of local water sources. Mining of urnanium has
lead to release of nuclear waste in those countries that mine it.
|
.
8. Thermal pollution:
First consider that 1/2 of the US water not used for agriculture is used to cool electric power plants-
 |
Water which is 'warmed-up' and then released into water bodies speeds up the metabolism of most living organisms. As increased metabolism requires more oxygen to sustain that level, thus animals living in such areas have a greater need of available oxygen. At the same time, the warmer the water the less dissolved oxygen the water can hold. As the energy of dissolved gases increases with heating, the more likely the gases are to move out of the water and into the atmosphere. Net result,
Instead of thermal 'pollution' these waters could be used for therma. enrichment.
|
Besides nuclear power plants:
Thermal pollution occurs
when storm water enters the streams after flowing over asphalt, parking lots,
and other non-porous surfaces which have been heated by the sun. Runoff can
reach a temperature of 90 degrees before entering the stream; water above
70 degrees may be harmful to aquatic life. Some creatures, such as trout,
are so sensitive to elevated water temperatures that they may perish even
after
the runoff mixes with stream water.
Activities such as cutting down trees, the removal of vegetation around the water, and construction can lead to an increase in water temperature. These practices can cause an increase in erosion which leads to an increase in dissolved solids in the water. As dissolved solids increase, the water becomes turbid or cloudy which allows the absorption of the sun's rays which increases the water temperature.
Optional Reading: New Waterborne Diseases from Environmental Health perspectives
A wide range of factors
promote waterborne disease epidemics. When hygienic conditions are compromised,
waterborne disease outbreaks appear inevitable. Irrigation with wastewater,
floods and other natural disasters, poor source water quality, and inadequate
or aging water treatment facilities or failing distribution system networks
are all contributory factors. This
has always been the case; however, alarming trends are becoming evident in
the emergence and resurgence of waterborne diseases. There has been a resurgence
of older diseases in
certain parts of the world, e.g., cholera in South America. However, it is
more difficult to define the emergence of a new disease (195). New routes
of exposure to previously
uncharacterized pathogens may result in emergence of disease. Increasing numbers
of susceptible individuals (very young, elderly, pregnant women and immunocompromised)
(196)
could provide an extensive human reservoir for opportunistic pathogens and
promote changes in virulence patterns, even in developed countries.
In addition, increased
adaptation to the human host could increase infection rates in populations
with no underlying susceptibilities. Clearly, these are areas in which far
more research is necessary if future risks from waterborne disease are to
be accurately evaluated.
Infectious agents categorized as emerging diseases and not recognized until
recently, or at least not in association with water, include L. pneumophila,
C. parvum, E. coli O157, V.
cholerae O139, hepatitis E, and H. pylori. Perhaps we should also add to this
list every waterborne pathogen that has developed resistance to antibiotics
or changed apparent virulence as they emerge as higher mortality risks.
Multiple antibiotic resistance has been shown to be widespread in waterborne
bacterial pathogens, and, as for nonwaterborne pathogens, is well-documented
and represents one of the greatest threats to public health (197-200). Examples
exist for almost all waterborne bacterial pathogens and represent what seems
to be an inevitable consequence of extensive use of antibiotics, not only
in the human population but also in agriculture and aquaculture (201). Transfer
of antibiotic and virulence factors in
drinking water biofilms is a poorly understood area of research, but in principle
they provide an ideal environment for horizontal gene transfer (177,202,203).
Biofilms could, therefore, represent an important risk factor in dissemination
of antibiotic and virulence genes. In addition, genes for polysaccharide synthesis,
conveying increased resistance to chlorine and preference for biofilm formation,
could also be transferred in drinking water biofilms.