Chapter 1

The Problem and Its Background

Water Pollution
Fresh water is the most important source of life on the earth. Any living thing may

survive without food for days however it is impossible to imagine life without water and

oxygen. The ever increasing human population enhances the demand of more water for

purposes like drinking, washing, performing industrial processes, irrigating crops,

arranging swimming pools and other water-sports centers. Water pollution is done by

the people of all over the world because of increasing demands and competitions of

luxuries life. Waste products from many human activities are spoiling the whole water

and decreasing the amount of oxygen available in the water. Such pollutants are

altering the physical, chemical, thermal, and biological characteristics of the water and

adversely affecting the lives inside as well as outside the water.

Water pollution has become a continuous increasing problem on the earth which is

affecting the human and animal lives in all aspects. Water pollution is the contamination

of drinking water by the poisonous pollutants generated by the human activities. The

whole water is getting polluted through many sources such as urban runoff, agricultural,

industrial, sedimentary, leeching from landfills, animal wastes, and other human

activities. All the pollutants are very harmful to the environment. Human population is

increasing day by day and thus their needs and competition leading pollution to the top

level. We need to follow some drastic changes in our habits to save the earth water as

well as continue the possibility of life here.

Water on the earth however that too is getting polluted because of human activities. It is
tough to estimate the possibility of life on the earth in the absence of fresh drinking
water. Water pollution is the mixing of foreign substances by means of organic,
inorganic, biological and radiological in the water degrading the quality and usefulness
of water.

Hazardous pollutants may contain various types of impurities including harmful

chemicals, dissolved gases, suspended matters, dissolved minerals, and even
microbes. All the contaminants reduce the level of dissolved oxygen in the water and
affecting the lives of animals and human beings to a great extent. Dissolved oxygen is
the oxygen present in water required by the aquatic system to continue the lives of
plants and animals. However biochemical oxygen is the demanded oxygen by the
aerobic micro-organisms to oxidize organic matters of wastes. Water pollution is caused
by two means, one is natural water pollution (due to the leaching of rocks, decay of
organic matters, decay of dead matters, silting, soil erosion, etc.) and another one is
man-made water pollution (due to the deforestation, set up of industries near large
water bodies, high level emission of industrial wastes, domestic sewage, synthetic
chemicals, radio-active wastes, fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides etc.).

Background of the Study

Water takes over 70% of the Earth’s surface, and because of water contamination,

innocent organisms are dying off and our drinking water has been impacted. The effects

of water pollution don’t only impact people, but they also can kill animals, fish, and other

organisms. It also disturbs the food chain because smaller animals eat many pollutants.

For example, in the oceanic life, smaller organisms are eaten by larger levels on the

food chain, which also get impacted by this water pollution.

The ecosystems, both terrestrial and oceanic, are severely destroyed by this water
pollution and this eventually does come back to impact us as well through diseases and

other issues.

Water pollution is any change chemically or biologically in water quality that has a

negative impact on living organisms that live in this water and/or use this water. Water

pollution can be caused agricultural runoff, 75,000 chemical compounds from industries

and factories, gasoline, cleaning products, and more.

Water pollution can be categorized into a few major areas of water contaminants

including: disease-causing bacteria or viruses, plastic or pesticides, and human

activities. Some ways the humans contribute to this water contamination are: from

gasoline, cleaning products, and factories.

Causes of water pollution

Most water pollution doesn't begin in the water itself. Take the oceans: around 80

percent of ocean pollution enters our seas from the land. Virtually any human activity

can have an effect on the quality of our water environment. When farmers fertilize the

fields, the chemicals they use are gradually washed by rain into the groundwater or

surface waters nearby. Sometimes the causes of water pollution are quite surprising.

Chemicals released by smokestacks (chimneys) can enter the atmosphere and then fall

back to earth as rain, entering seas, rivers, and lakes and causing water pollution.

That's called atmospheric deposition. Water pollution has many different causes and

this is one of the reasons why it is such a difficult problem to solve.

Sewage

With billions of people on the planet, disposing of sewage waste is a major problem.

According to 2015 and 2016 figures from the World Health Organization, some 663

million people (9 percent of the world's population) don't have access to safe drinking

water, while 2.4 billion (40 percent of the world's population) don't have proper

sanitation (hygienic toilet facilities); although there have been great improvements in

securing access to clean water, relatively little progress has been made on improving

global sanitation in the last decade. Sewage disposal affects people's immediate

environments and leads to water-related illnesses such as diarrhea that kills 525,000

children under five each year. (Back in 2002, the World Health Organization estimated

that water-related diseases could kill as many as 135 million people by 2020.) In

developed countries, most people have flush toilets that take sewage waste quickly and

hygienically away from their homes.

Yet the problem of sewage disposal does not end there. When you flush the toilet, the

waste has to go somewhere and, even after it leaves the sewage treatment works, there

is still waste to dispose of. Sometimes sewage waste is pumped untreated into the sea.

Until the early 1990s, around 5 million tons of sewage was dumped by barge from New

York City each year. According to 2002 figures from the UK government's Department

for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the sewers of Britain collect

around 11 billion liters of waste water every day, some of it still pumped untreated into

the sea through long pipes. The New River that crosses the border from Mexico into

California once carried with it 20–25 million gallons (76–95 million liters) of raw sewage
each day; a new waste water plant on the US-Mexico border, completed in 2007,

substantially solved that problem. Unfortunately, even in some of the richest nations, the

practice of dumping sewage into the sea continues. In early 2012, it was reported that

the tiny island of Guernsey (between Britain and France) has decided to continue

dumping 16,000 tons of raw sewage into the sea each day.

In theory, sewage is a completely natural substance that should be broken down

harmlessly in the environment: 90 percent of sewage is water. In practice, sewage

contains all kinds of other chemicals, from the pharmaceutical drugs people take to the

paper, plastic, and other wastes they flush down their toilets. When people are sick with

viruses, the sewage they produce carries those viruses into the environment. It is

possible to catch illnesses such as hepatitis, typhoid, and cholera from river and sea

water.

Nutrients

Suitably treated and used in moderate quantities, sewage can be a fertilizer: it

returns important nutrients to the environment, such as nitrogen and

phosphorus, which plants and animals need for growth. The trouble is,

sewage is often released in much greater quantities than the natural

environment can cope with. Chemical fertilizers used by farmers also add

nutrients to the soil, which drain into rivers and seas and add to the fertilizing

effect of the sewage. Together, sewage and fertilizers can cause a massive
increase in the growth of algae or plankton that overwhelms huge areas of

oceans, lakes, or rivers. This is known as a harmful algal bloom (also known

as an HAB or red tide, because it can turn the water red). It is harmful

because it removes oxygen from the water that kills other forms of life, leading

to what is known as a dead zone. The Gulf of Mexico has one of the world's

most spectacular dead zones. Each summer, according to studies by

the NOAA, it grows to an area of around 5500–6000 square miles (14,000–

15,500 square kilometers), which is about the same size as the state of

Connecticut.

Waste water

A few statistics illustrate the scale of the problem that waste water (chemicals washed

down drains and discharged from factories) can cause. Around half of all ocean

pollution is caused by sewage and waste water. Each year, the world generates

perhaps 5–10 billion tons of industrial waste, much of which is pumped untreated into

rivers, oceans, and other waterways. [8] In the United States alone, around 400,000

factories take clean water from rivers, and many pump polluted waters back in their

place. However, there have been major improvements in waste water treatment

recently. Since 1970, in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

has invested about $70 billion in improving water treatment plants that, as of 2015,

serve around 88 percent of the US population (compared to just 69 percent in 1972).

However, another $271 billion is still needed to update and upgrade the system.[15]
Factories are point sources of water pollution, but quite a lot of water is polluted by

ordinary people from nonpoint sources; this is how ordinary water becomes waste water

in the first place. Virtually everyone pours chemicals of one sort or another down their

drains or toilets. Even detergents used in washing machines and dishwashers

eventually end up in our rivers and oceans. So do the pesticides we use on our

gardens. A lot of toxic pollution also enters waste water from highway runoff. Highways

are typically covered with a cocktail of toxic chemicals—everything from spilled fuel and

brake fluids to bits of worn tires (themselves made from chemical additives) and

exhaust emissions. When it rains, these chemicals wash into drains and rivers. It is not

unusual for heavy summer rainstorms to wash toxic chemicals into rivers in such

concentrations that they kill large numbers of fish overnight. It has been estimated that,

in one year, the highway runoff from a single large city leaks as much oil into our water

environment as a typical tanker spill. Some highway runoff runs away into drains; others

can pollute groundwater or accumulate in the land next to a road, making it increasingly

toxic as the years go by.

Statement of the Problem

What are the main types of water pollution?

What are the causes of water pollution?