Water Pollution: A Global Menace and Its Diverse Impacts

Essay, Pages 11 (2511 words)

Views

For developing countries, 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. In the thirty-three poorest countries, 60 percent of the urban population have access to clean drinking water but only 20 percent of people living in rural areas do.

Don't use plagiarized sources. Get your custom essay on

“ Water Pollution: A Global Menace and Its Diverse Impacts ”

Get custom paper

NEW! smart matching with writer

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. In Poland, for example, 85 percent of all surface water is unfit to drink. 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 300 million tons (272.

2 million metric tons) of solid waste and 5 trillion gallons (20 trillion liters) of liquid effluent dumped into it annually.

But even developed countries face serious issues. In August 2016, a study researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, showed unsafe levels of toxic chemicals in public drinking water (potable water supplies) in at least 33.

U.S. states. The study, focusing on polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs)--two common industrial-use chemicals that prior studies link to cancer, obesity, high cholesterol, hormone disruptions, and other diseases,--showed that PFAS levels routinely exceeded recommended safety levels set by the government.

Even in developed countries with improved sanitation and water treatment facilities, contaminated water supplies may present significant public health hazards. Municipal water supplies in the U.S. have long shown vulnerability to lead contamination, mainly due to aging lead-pipe delivery systems that allow for leaching of the heavy metal into the water during repairs or water chemistry changes.

Even in developed countries with improved sanitation and water treatment facilities, contaminated water supplies may present significant public health hazards. Starting in 2014, a water crisis in Flint, Michigan, was triggered when, as a cost saving measure, utility officials temporarily used water from the Flint River as a source for the public water supply. Citizen complaints about altered taste, color, and appearance of the water were disregarded until children were discovered to have elevated levels of lead in their blood. Throughout much of the crisis, state officials insisted that the water was safe to drink, but by early 2015, the city's water supply for nearly 100,000 people became a focus of local, state, and federal disaster management. Remediation efforts were compounded by political conflicts. In January 2016, A federal state of emergency was declared in January 2016. People living in Flint were instructed to use only bottled or filtered water for drinking and bathing.

Although water quality in Flint returned to acceptable levels during 2016, residents were instructed to continue to use bottled or filtered water until all the lead pipes have been replaced.

In March 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded a $100 million grant to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to make repairs and upgrades to the physical infrastructure (pipes, pumping stations, treatment plants) and to remove lead-contaminated pipes and improve drinking water in Flint. Funding comes from the still fully funded Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act of 2016, or WIIN, signed by President Obama in December 2016. The state of Michigan had already allocated an additional $250 million in state funding and provide testing and care to residents. Under terms of the Federal grant, Michigan will contribute an additional $20 million dollars.

Less-developed countries generally suffer lower levels of water quality. 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, forty-two of fifty major rivers are reported to be ecological disasters. Residues from palm oil and rubber manufacturing, along with heavy erosion from logging of tropical rain forests, have destroyed all higher forms of life in most of these rivers. In the Philippines, domestic sewage makes up 60-70 percent of the total volume of Manila's Pasig River. Thousands of people use the river not only for bathing and washing clothes, but also as their source of drinking and cooking water. Only 63 percent of groundwater resources in China can be used for drinking water due to pollution levels. As of 2005, wastewater treatment in China was estimated at or below 20 percent; however, the government now requires wastewater treatment facilities in all Chinese cities, which will raise the percentage of treated water to 45 to 60 percent. Approximately 75 percent of lakes in China are reported to be seriously polluted.

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 drainpipes, 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. Salt levels in the San Joaquin River in central California rose about 50 percent from 1930 to 1970 as a result of agricultural runoff. Salinity levels in the Colorado River and surrounding farm fields had become so high that millions of acres of valuable croplands were abandoned. The United States constructed a huge desalination plant at Yuma, Arizona, to reduce salinity in the river. In northern states, millions of tons of sodium chloride (NaCl) and calcium chloride (CaCl2) 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 (S2-) 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, cancer, and can affect reproductive development. 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 26,000 hazardous waste sites will require cleanup because they pose an imminent threat to public health, mostly through water pollution.

Pollution control has proven effective. 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 l950s, however, England undertook a massive cleanup of the Thames. More than $250 million in public funds plus millions more from industry were spent to curb pollution. By the early l980s, 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 three hundred years. With a little effort, care, and concern for the environment, similar improvements can develop elsewhere.

In addition to pollution from natural sources and industrial runoff, the possible intentional pollution of water supplies and resources is a recognized vulnerability and an area of concern for scientists and security specialists.

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 result in eutrophication (excess nutrient deposition into bodies of water altering water quality) of 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. Solid wastes and toxic substances derived from discarded computers and other types of electronics (e-waste) are also a growing concerns.

Microplastics are tiny fragments of plastic measuring less than 0.2 inches (5 mm) from synthetic fabrics, construction materials, exfoliant soaps, cleaning products, packaging, and plastic production by-products. Synthetic clothes, for example, may release up to 1,900 tiny microplastic fibers with each washing. Those particles end up in wastewater and eventually larger fresh and marine waterways. In 2012, researchers published the results of a study in the Journal of Environmental Science that found microplastics smaller than 1mm in the marine food chain. Microplastics have been identified in marine concentrations of trash and debris, such as the Pacific Garbage Patch. In 2013, international cosmetic and household cleaner maker Unilever announced that it would remove all microplastics by 2015 from its popular Dove, Ponds, and Vaseline personal care products.

in March 2018, scientists with the CreditOcean Cleanup Foundation claimed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was exponentially increasing in size, currently with an area 4 to 16 times larger than previously estimated. The patch is created by a conference of currents that carry plastic debris. The plastics, ranging from microscopic bits to large chunks of floating debris, take many years to disintegrate into particles then eaten by fish that eventually enter the human food chain. The debris patch is now estimated to be four times the size of California with an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic.

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 eight parts per million (ppm) will support game fish and other desirable forms of aquatic life. Water with less than two 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. As water temperature increases, the amount of dissolved oxygen decreases. Global climate change is resulting in a warming of the Earth that could affect water quality and the health of aquatic ecosystems and organisms.

The Federal Water Pollution Control Act was passed in 1972 to 'restore and maintain the physical, chemical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters by preventing point and nonpoint pollution sources, providing assistance to publicly owned treatment works for the improvement of wastewater treatment, and maintaining the integrity of wetlands.' This act is more commonly referred to as the Clean Water Act (CWA) and regulates both direct and indirect discharges of the 126 priority pollutants, conventional pollutants (e.g., total suspended soils, oils), and non-conventional pollutants, which are any pollutants not included in the two former categories. The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) regulates direct (or point source) discharges of pollutants. A permit must be obtained to discharge pollutants into navigable waters after review of analytical data provided by the applicant detailing the pollutant content of the effluent (treated water).

Even drinkable water can suffer from pollution that encourages the growth of deadly bacteria and parasites such as Naegleria fowleri can be deadly. Other perils for fresh water ecosystems include Acanthamoeba (which can causes severe eye infections (keratitis), especially in contact lens wearers, and Balamuthia mandrillari which can cause lethal encephalitis. In the case of most parasitic infections, infection is via nasal passages or breaks in the skin.

Water pollution became a defining issue during the run up to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as athletes were scheduled to compete in two major waterways with elevated levels of harmful microorganisms. In Guanabara Bay where Olympic sailors competed, viral levels from water samples were up to one million times higher than U.S. standards deem healthy, and large spikes in bacterial counts were noted as well. In their bid for the Olympics, Brazil pledged to improve Rio de Janeiro's sanitation, as most sewage in the city of 7 million people is untreated and flows into waterways, eventually reaching Guanabara Bay, the city's beaches, and the South Atlantic Ocean. By the time the Games began, all three Olympic water venues including Guanabara Bay, Olympic Lake, and Copacabana Beach remained heavily polluted with raw sewage, debris, or dead fish.

Resources

Books

Duncan, Ezra. Water Pollution and Treatment. Larsen & Keller Education, 2017.

Kneese, Allen V. Water Pollution. Routledge, 2017.

McCall, Duke K. The Clean Water Act Handbook. Lanham, MD: Bernan Press, 2017.

McMillan, Sheryl. Water Pollution: A Global Concern. New York: Callisto Reference, 2015.

Pietz, David Allen. The Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.

Weis, Judith S. Marine Pollution: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Other

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 'Drinking Water.' http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/ (accessed JApril 1, 2018).

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 'History of the Clean Water Act.' https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/history-clean-water-act (accessed April 1, 2018).

World Health Organization (WHO). 'Water Sanitation Hygiene.' http://www.who.int/entity/water_sanitation_health/en (accessed April 1, 2018).

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)

'Water pollution.' Environmental Encyclopedia, edited by Deirdre S. Blanchfield, Gale, 2011. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CV2644151471/OVIC?u=plan_smcl&sid=OVIC&xid=ba8bf5c5. Accessed 28 Jan. 2019.

Gale Document Number: GALE|CV2644151471