Biography water pollution

Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. Bibcode : Chmsp. Archived March 12, , at the Wayback Machine Bibcode : PNAS.. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment. Bibcode : EMnAs. Journal of Environmental Management. February Virgin Islands". Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. March Aquatic Toxicology. ISSN X.

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New Delhi: New Age International. Marine Pollution Bulletin. Bibcode : MarPB.. Nova Science Publishers, Inc. George; Filippini, Maria May 18, CWA section p , 33 U. Wetlands for Water Pollution Control. Water Pollution Control. Geneva: Stockholm Convention Secretariat. May 8, Press release. Wastewater engineering: treatment and reuse 4th ed.

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Chemistry of the Environment. Checkmark Books. Bibcode : Fish Walter Helbling; Virginia E. Anthropogenic Pollution of Aquatic Ecosystems. Springer Nature. Retrieved August 9, Pollution is a major stress factor affecting all aquatic ecosystems including fresh, coastal and open ocean waters. October Journal of the American Water Resources Association.

Geological Survey". Retrieved February 9, Frontiers for Young Minds. China Daily. June 7, In Harrison RM ed. Pollution: Causes, Effects and Control 5th ed. Royal Society of Chemistry. Retrieved April 13, August 28, Archived from the original on January 13, McGraw-Hill Book Company. Burton; H. David Stensel Text was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.

Natural systems for waste management and treatment. Joe Middlebrooks, Ronald W. New York: McGraw-Hill. Nashville, TN Stormwater Best Management Practice. BMP fact sheet. Science Daily. National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. Archived from the original on February 19, Menlo Park, CA. Trenton, NJ. The LawPhil Project. Archived from the original on 21 September What are the main steps in sewage treatment?

There are four main stages of the wastewater treatment process, namely: Stage 1: Screening Stage 2: Primary treatment Stage 3: Secondary treatment Stage 4: Final treatment. What are the main causes of water pollution? The main causes of water pollution are attributed to Industrial activities Urbanization Religious and social practices Agricultural runoff Accidents such as oil spills, nuclear fallouts etc.

What are the effects of water pollution? Start Quiz. Your result is as below. Login To View Results. Did not receive OTP? View Result. Dr Rajkumari babita August 26, at pm. Rishi November 5, at pm. Best source for obtaining detailed information about anything. Welson phangcho April 13, at am. Ishan June 1, at pm. Best platform for gaining accurate solutions of Maths And Science.

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Cardoso C. Non-indigenous species. EUR EN. DOI Archived from the original PDF on Retrieved Thus, a landowner whose water supply was inadvertently contaminated might bring a successful lawsuit against the polluter for common-law negligence where a lawsuit for nuisance or trespass would fail. Even when a polluter exercises the utmost diligence to prevent water contamination, an injured landowner may still have recourse under the doctrine of strict liability.

Under this doctrine, polluters who engage in "abnormally dangerous" activities are held responsible for any water contamination that results. Courts consider six factors when determining whether a particular activity is abnormally dangerous: the probability that the activity will cause harm to another, the likelihood that the harm will be great, the ability to eliminate the risk by exercising reasonable care, the extent to which the activity is uncommon or unusual, the activity's appropriateness for a particular location, and the activity's value or danger to the community.

The doctrine of strict liability arose out of a national conflict between competing values during the industrial revolution. This conflict pitted those who believed it was necessary to create an environment that promoted commerce against those who believed it was necessary to preserve a healthy and clean environment. For many years, courts were reluctant to impose strict liability on U.

Since the early s, courts have placed greater emphasis on preserving a healthy and clean environment. In Cities Service Co. State , So. The court concluded that this mining activity was abnormally dangerous. Some activities inherently create abnormally dangerous risks to abutting waterways. In such cases, courts do not employ a balancing test to determine whether an activity is abnormally dangerous.

Instead, they consider these activities to be dangerous in and of themselves. The transportation and storage of high explosives and the operation of oil and gas wells are activities courts have held to create inherent risks of abnormally dangerous proportions. The doctrine of riparian ownership forms the final prong of common-law recovery.

A riparian proprietor is the owner of land abutting a stream of water, and has the right to divert the water for any useful purpose. Some courts define the term useful purpose broadly to include almost any purpose whatsoever, whereas other courts define it more narrowly to include only purposes that are reasonable or profitable. In any event, downstream riparian proprietors are often placed at a disadvantage because the law protects upstream owners' initial use of the water.

For example, an upstream proprietor may construct a dam to appropriate a reasonable amount of water without compensating a downstream proprietor. However, cases involving thermal pollution provide an exception to this rule. For example, downstream owners who use river water to make ice can seek injunctive relief to prevent upstream owners from engaging in any activities that raise the water temperature by even one degree Fahrenheit.

Andreen, William L. Findley, Roger W. Farber, and Jody Freeman. Cases and Materials on Environmental Law. Paul , Minn. Hipfel, Steven J. Houck, Oliver A. Washington, D. Ryan, Mark A. The Clean Water Act Handbook. Among the many environmental problems that offend and concern us, perhaps none is as powerful and dramatic as water pollution.

Ugly, scummy water full of debris, sludge , and dark foam is surely one of the strongest and most easily recognized symbols of our misuse of the environment. What is pollution? The verb "pollute" is derived from the Latin polluere : to foul or corrupt. Our most common meaning is to make something unfit or harmful to living things, especially by the addition of waste matter or sewage.

A broader definition might include any physical, biological, or chemical change in water quality that adversely affects living organisms or makes water unsuitable for desired uses. Paradoxically, however, a change that adversely affects one organism may be advantageous to another. Nutrients that stimulate oxygen consumption by bacteria and other decomposers in a river or lake, for instance, may be lethal to fish but will stimulate a flourishing community of decomposers.

Whether the quality of the water has suffered depends on your perspective. There are natural sources of water contamination, such as poison springs, oil seeps, and sedimentation from erosion , but most discussions of water pollution focus on human-caused changes that affect water quality or usability. The most serious water pollutants in terms of human health worldwide are pathogenic organisms.

Altogether, at least 25 million deaths each year are blamed on these water-related diseases, including nearly two-thirds of the mortalities of children under five years old. The main source of these pathogens is from untreated or improperly treated human wastes. In the more developed countries, sewage treatment plants and other pollution control techniques have reduced or eliminated most of the worst sources of pathogens in inland surface waters.

For poor people, the situation is quite different. The United Nations estimates that three-quarters of the population in less-developed countries have inadequate sanitation , and that less than half have access to clean drinking water. Conditions are generally worse in remote, rural areas where sewage treatment is usually primitive or nonexistent, and purified water is either unavailable or too expensive to obtain.

This lack of pollution control is reflected in surface and groundwater quality in countries that lack the resources or political will to enforce pollution control. The Vistula River, which winds through the country's most heavily industrialized region, is so badly polluted that more than half the river is utterly devoid of life and unsuited even for industrial use.

In Russia, the lower Volga River is reported to be on the brink of disaster due to the million tons The less-developed countries of South America , Africa, and Asia have even worse water quality than do the poorer countries of Europe. Sewage treatment is usually either totally lacking or woefully inadequate. Low technological capabilities and little money for pollution control are made even worse by burgeoning populations, rapid urbanization, and the shift of heavy industry from developed countries where pollution laws are strict to less developed countries where regulations are more lenient.

In Malaysia, 42 of 50 major rivers are reported to be "ecological disasters. Thousands of people use the river not only for bathing and washing clothes, but also as their source of drinking and cooking water. Of 78 monitored rivers in China, 54 are reported to be seriously polluted. Of 44 major cities in China, 41 use "contaminated" water supplies, and few do more than rudimentary treatment before it is delivered to the public.

Pollution control standards and regulations usually distinguish between point and nonpoint pollution sources. Factories, power plants , sewage treatment plants, underground coal mines, and oil wells are classified as point sources because they discharge pollution from specific locations, such as drain pipes, ditches, or sewer outfalls.

These sources are discrete and identifiable, so they are relatively easy to monitor and regulate. It is generally possible to divert effluent from the waste streams of these sources and treat it before it enters the environment. In contrast, nonpoint sources of water pollution are scattered or diffused, having no specific location where they discharge into a particular body of water.

Nonpoint sources include runoff from farm fields, golf courses , lawns and gardens, construction sites, logging areas, roads, streets, and parking lots. Multiple origins and scattered locations make this pollution more difficult to monitor, regulate, and treat than point sources. Desert soils often contain high salt concentrations that can be mobilized by irrigation and concentrated by evaporation, reaching levels that are toxic for plants and animals.

Salinity levels in the Colorado River and surrounding farm fields have become so high in recent years that millions of acres of valuable croplands have had to be abandoned. The United States is building a huge desalination plant at Yuma, Arizona, to reduce salinity in the river. In northern states, millions of tons of sodium chloride and calcium chloride are used to melt road ice in the winter.

The corrosive damage to highways and automobiles and the toxic effects on vegetation are enormous. Leaching of road salts into surface waters has a similarly devastating effect on aquatic ecosystems. Acids are released by mining and as by-products of industrial processes, such as leather tanning, metal smelting and plating, petroleum distillation, and organic chemical synthesis.

Coal mining is an especially important source of acid water pollution. Sulfides in coal are solubilized to make sulfuric acid. Thousands of miles of streams in the United States have been poisoned by acids and metals, some so severely that they are essentially lifeless. Thousands of different natural and synthetic organic chemicals are used in the chemical industry to make pesticides, plastics , pharmaceuticals, pigments, and other products that we use in everyday life.

Many of these chemicals are highly toxic. Exposure to very low concentrations can cause birth defects , genetic disorders, and cancer. Some synthetic chemicals are resistant to degradation, allowing them to persist in the environment for many years. Contamination of surface waters and groundwater by these chemicals is a serious threat to human health.

Hundreds of millions of tons of hazardous organic wastes are thought to be stored in dumps, landfills, lagoons, and underground tanks in the United States. Many, perhaps most, of these sites are leaking toxic chemicals into surface waters or groundwater or both. The Environmental Protection Agency EPA estimates that about 26, hazardous waste sites will require cleanup because they pose an imminent threat to public health , mostly through water pollution.

Although the oceans are vast, unmistakable signs of human abuse can be seen even in the most remote places. Garbage and human wastes from coastal cities are dumped into the ocean. Silt , fertilizers, and pesticides from farm fields smothered coral reefs , coastal spawning beds, and over-fertilize estuaries. Every year millions of tons of plastic litter and discarded fishing nets entangle aquatic organisms, dooming them to a slow death.

Generally coastal areas, where the highest concentrations of sea life are found and human activities take place, are most critically affected. The amount of oxygen dissolved in water is a good indicator of water quality and of the kinds of life it will support. Water with an oxygen content above 8 parts per million ppm will support game fish and other desirable forms of aquatic life.

Biography water pollution

Water with less than 2 ppm oxygen will support only worms, bacteria, fungi , and other decomposers. Oxygen is added to water by diffusion from the air, especially when turbulence and mixing rates are high, and by photosynthesis of green plants, algae, and cyanobacteria. Oxygen is removed from water by respiration and chemical processes that consume oxygen.

In spite of the multitude of bad news about water quality, some encouraging pollution control stories are emerging. One of the most outstanding examples is the Thames River in London. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution , the Thames had been little more than an open sewer, full of vile and toxic waste products from domestic and industrial sewers.

In the ls, however, England undertook a massive cleanup of the Thames. By the early ls, the river was showing remarkable signs of rejuvenation. Oxygen levels had rebounded and some 95 species of fish had returned, including the pollution-sensitive salmon , which had not been seen in London for years. With a little effort, care, and concern for the environment, similar improvements can develop elsewhere.

Mayberck, M. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Reference, Protecting Our Future Today. Cunningham, William P. Water pollution exists when water is contaminated by impurities or its quality is otherwise adversely affected, for example, by solid matter or thermal discharges. Water pollution problems have a long history that can be traced to antiquity, and the attempts of communities to control such problems have an equally long track record.

The nature of water pollution problems has changed over time, and their geographic scale has steadily increased, as has the scale of institutional solutions that have been adopted to control them. This entry explores the key changes in the nature and scale of water pollution and in the institutional solutions that have been adopted as a response to it.

These problems were initially local, when wells and ground water were used for water supplies, and communities responded to them with local public health and sanitation regulations. The construction of networked water supplies and sewer systems after the mids increased the scale of water pollution. Local regulations proved powerless when sources of pollution were increasingly outside the local jurisdiction.

This situation gave rise to the first state and national water pollution policies, which successfully safeguarded public health but which largely failed to improve in-stream water quality. The nature of water pollution changed in industrialized countries around the time of World War II — because the war effort and postwar reconstruction resulted in the rapid growth of industrial production and increased discharge of industrial effluents.

New innovations such as organic pesticides and synthetic detergents also proved potent water pollutants. Furthermore, there was controversy over asbestos-containing discharges from Reserve Mining into Lake Superior in Silver Bay, Minnesota , in the s; the leak of toxic chemicals from the Sandoz factory in Basel , Switzerland , in ; and the cyanide spill from a gold mine in Baia Mare, Romania , which polluted the Tisza and Danube rivers in More recently, in November , an explosion in a chemical plant in Jilin , China , polluted the Songhua River with benzene and nitrobenzene.

Water pollution continues to be a public health problem in the developing world. Worldwide, one child out of six under five years of age dies of a diarrheal disease such as cholera, typhoid fever , dysentery, and gastroenteritis, which are caused by the contamination of water by human wastes. Moreover, weak enforcement or the nonexistence of environmental and safety regulations in developing countries means that agriculture, horticulture, and mining are major sources of toxic water pollutants such as pesticides and mercury.

Such pollutants have caused grave public health consequences across the developing world, but particularly in severely polluted areas such as the Aral Sea region in Central Asia. In some places, such as in Bangladesh , naturally occurring arsenic pollutes certain layers of ground water on which many communities depend for their water supply. Most developed countries have adopted water pollution policies that have reduced conventional water pollutants from point sources.

Conventional pollutants include biochemical oxygen demand BOD , total suspended solids TSS , fecal coliform, oil and grease, and pH acidity and alkalinity. Point sources include municipal sewage treatment plants, industrial establishments, and other facilities, which only contributed about half of all conventional pollutants in the United States when the Clean Water Act of , with its focus on point sources, was adopted.

Water pollution originating from nonpoint sources, such as agriculture, streets and roads, and storm sewers, was not originally controlled with the same level of effectiveness. National policies have also been less successful in reducing the amount of nonconventional pollutants, such as those of toxic chemicals. More recently, market-based instruments such as fertilizer, manure, and pesticide taxes have been used in many countries for controlling water pollution from nonpoint sources.

Other market based instruments, particularly tradable effluent permits and sewerage charges, have increasingly been used also for controlling conventional water pollutants. The incentives and capacity of states to control pollution from sources that lie outside their jurisdictions is limited, however. International environmental agreements have been negotiated to address this problem, including early agreements on the transportation of dangerous substances on the River Rhine in western Europe, which came into force between and , and the Boundary Waters Treaty between the United States and Canada , which took effect in International agreements since have addressed, for example, the pollution of the marine environment by oil and dumping; the pollution of transboundary bodies of water such as the Baltic Sea , the North Sea , and the Mediterranean; the elimination of persistent organic compounds; and the international transport of hazardous materials and liability for damages caused by their transport.

Some of these conventions, such as the Baltic Sea Convention, have been successful, while others have made little difference to the quality of the marine environment to date. Andrews, Richard N. Jamison, Dean T. Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries. New York : Oxford University Press. Kirchner, Andree, ed. Paavola, Jouni. Law: Water and Air Pollution.

McNeill, and Carolyn Merchant, — London and New York: Routledge. Tarr, Joel A. Pollution is defined as the addition of harmful substances into the ecosystem the network of interactions between living organisms and their environment. Pollutants might be slightly harmful to humans, but very harmful to aquatic life. For instance, in certain lakes and rivers when acid rain rain polluted with acidic chemicals falls upon them, toxic poisonous metals that cause fish to die are released from sediments particles of soil, sand, and minerals, and animal or plant matter washed from land into water.

These metals—chromium, aluminum, and mercury are just a few—are harmful to fish. But humans would have to ingest much larger quantities than the aquatic or marine life. The toxins also accumulate in the tissues of fish as they eat other fish ingest or plants containing toxins. If one were to catch and eat a fish that has a high content of toxins in them the human is affected too.

Metals are not the only pollutants that are of concern, as evidenced by oil spills that kill marine life in large quantities and persist on beaches and in sediments for a long time. Industrial processes produce harmful waste, and often this is discharged into a nearby stream, river, or ocean. There are many ways to cause pollution and many types of pollutants.

Transportation is a leading source of pollution, both in the atmosphere mass of air surrounding Earth and in water reserves. Every time oil or gasoline is spilled on the roadway, it eventually is transported to the nearest water reserve. Many of these reserves are groundwater. Groundwater is freshwater that resides in rock and soil layers beneath Earth's land surface, and groundwater can eventually transport pollutants into rivers, streams, and the sea.

Thus, pollutants can come from large areas or specific areas. These are referred to as non-point source and point-source pollution, respectively. If the source of pollution is able to be identified and "pointed" to, the source of pollution is point-source. Point sources include drainage pipes from factories, leaky underground gasoline tanks, and places where people discard used motor oil.

Non-point sources are far more reaching, such as the transportation example. Not only do toxic chemicals come from leaky automobiles and gasoline spills, they come from exhaust fumes that are taken into the atmosphere and then are brought back down to earth in rain. A smokestack that releases hazardous gasses into the air might very well be responsible for acid rain many miles away, but it would be hard to identify the source if the factory was a sufficient distance from the site of the rainfall event.

How do pollutants affect the world around us? An oil spill renders seabirds flightless, because the oil coats their feathers. Oil makes areas of waterfront land uninhabitable, and some animals turtles bury eggs in the sand and thus they are affected too. Metal contamination from industrial processes—like the ones mentioned above as well as lead, arsenic, antimony, and cadmium—are by-products of the manufacturing of many types of goods.

It turns out that chemicals contained in oil and gasoline are carcinogenic, which means they can cause cancer. The metals, known as heavy metals, can cause damage to many organs in one's body, most notably the liver and the brain. Even "land based" pollutants eventually make their way into groundwater, streams, and rivers. Many older houses were painted with paint that contained lead, and that anyone who eats paint chips from these older homes can develop mental difficulties because lead is very toxic.

Mercury is used in thermostats in many homes, in thermometers, and in industry. It is also used in batteries, but to a limited extent. Mercury can combine with other elements to form one of the most dangerous chemicals known to man, dimethyl mercury. A single drop can kill a person in less than one month. Arsenic is used, among other things, to make lumber resist rotting.

However, the arsenic gets soaked from the wood eventually and ends up in the ecosystem. Untreated sewage from humans and animals poses a problem to water sources. Because of limited facilities in developing countries to handle the processing of this waste, many times it is simply dumped into rivers or oceans untreated. These substances contain disease-causing organisms and present a danger to the health of humans and animals.

Sewage disposal is not only a problem in developing countries; in May , the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, dumped 1. The problem stems from Milwaukee's storm drainage system, which is interconnected with the sewer system. After a heavy rain, the storm drainage pipes and sewer pipes both fill with runoff and the sewers cannot handle the extra load.

The result is an overflow and Milwaukee water officials were forced to dump the sewage rather than allow it to back up directly into people's bathrooms and basements. Milwaukee officials are studying different plans in order to choose the best method of separating the city's storm and sewer systems. The population of Earth is over six billion people, and not all countries adhere to the same regulations about protecting the environment.

Before the industrial revolution in the late nineteenth century, pollution of sea water and surface waters was largely attributable to natural causes, such as drought prolonged below-normal levels of rain conditions that in turn, led to increased concentrations of various compounds in the water supply. When automobiles and gasoline-powered machinery became available, pollution surged, due to increased output of consumer goods and machinery.

Conservation laws in many developed countries have helped to correct pollution in many air and water sources since the time of the industrial revolution. Some developing countries still use highly-polluting products such as fuel with lead components, and environmental scientists are now concentrating their efforts in studying the long-term effects of water and air pollution on a worldwide scope.

Not all pollution is attributed to oil spills, industry, and transportation. Humans contribute to pollution in the course of everyday activities. Washing automobiles, lawn fertilizers, cleaning products eventually end up in the water supply. The soap and shampoo from bathing, disinfectants for cleaning the kitchen and bathroom, nail polish, and the waxes and oils for cleaning floors are just a few examples of home products that contribute to the pollution of the water supply.

Lawnmowers are very inefficient when it comes to cleaning exhaust, so the gasses end up in the atmosphere and fall to Earth in rain. Medical products, such as antibiotics contain substances that are helpful to some organisms but not to others, and the introduction of these substances can result in the killing of aquatic life or altering the reproductive cycles of various species.

Based on many years of scientific studies, there are regulations from the U. For instance, the human body needs chromium, but very little of it, and a person gets it automatically from eating a balanced diet. Iron is critical for making sure oxygen gets transported with blood cells but too much iron is dangerous. Based on studies with animals, plants, and humans, the EPA has determined what levels of many pollutants can be ingested with no proven risk of health trouble.

Adhering to these standards is expensive because industries that produce pollutants must buy expensive equipment to filter the harmful chemicals as well as gasses from the waters they discharge. The price is passed along to the consumer by raising product prices. This was the case in the early s with gasoline, when adding a lead-based compound to gasoline prolonged engine life.

The risks of the added lead outweighed the benefits, and the government decided to ban lead-products in gasoline and replace them with a chemical that essentially does the same job, but is non-toxic. A major concern of the damage of the quality of ocean waters is the dumping of garbage. It is a common practice to load barges with millions of pounds of refuse every day and sail offshore for several miles, then dump the contents into the sea.

Many items in these garbage barges are toxic, such as metals from old batteries and medical waste.