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Wastewater pollution is one of the most damaging types of pollution to our planet alongside air pollution, with the majority of it flowing back into the environment without being reused or treated. As water is our most precious resource, we, as humans, should do more to take care of it and minimize wastage where possible. So, what causes the wastage of water and how can we prevent it? Read on for more information to start taking the first step in making our planet better today!
Domestic wastewater
The nature and volume of the impurities within sewage can make disposing of domestic wastewater fairly tricky since this domestic sewage is likely to hold disease-causing microbes. Sewage, wastewater that contains urine, faeces, and laundry waste, can often cause issues when people flush pharmaceutical and chemical substances down their toilets. This wastewater can carry harmful bacteria and viruses into our environment to cause health issues, making some people ill. A common disease caused by contaminated, untreated sewage is diarrhea.
Industrial and agricultural activities
Furthermore, harmful chemicals and toxic substances are easily dissolved in water from towns, factories, and farms within industrial and agricultural activities. Some industrial plants, such as food manufacturing plants, need equipment to be cleaned rigorously between production processes, resulting in high consumptions of water. This then produces large amounts of wastewater. Furthermore, plants such as fossil fuel power stations produce wastewater with vast amounts of metals like lead, chromium, and mercury, alongside nitrogen compounds. When considering the impact of agriculture on our environment, agriculture affects the quality of water through releasing nutrients, being a result of fertilizers and soil management, and chemicals such as pesticides into the water environment. Whilst nutrients like fertilizers can certainly increase agricultural productivity and profits of farms, it has the knock-on effect of harming our environment. Water can also be contaminated by other aspects of agriculture, including processing wastes from crops, organic livestock waste, silage effluents, and antibiotics.
Storm runoff
Water can dissolve more substances than any other liquid, making it especially vulnerable to pollution. Metals, solvents and toxic sludge can often easily find their way into our waterways, especially through rainfall-runoff, which carries these harmful substances straight into our waterways from different surfaces. This unintentional runoff of liquid can drive toxic chemicals into our lakes, rivers, and oceans, having a devastating impact on marine wildlife. Therefore, whilst this process wastes our most precious natural resource, it also puts whole species of aquatic life at risk, potentially even having a knock-on effect on the whole food chain pyramid. Suburban and urban areas produce much storm runoff because of the large amount of paved, hard surfaces. When it rains heavily, the overflow of wastewater systems can result in the discharge of untreated sewage water into nearby streams and other sources of water.
How can we reduce or prevent wastewater pollution?
With wastewater being produced in large volumes from a variety of different causes, it’s important for there to be a wastewater treatment process to help make the problem more manageable. Sewage is carried away from developed countries’ homes efficiently through sewage pipes, which is then treated in water treatment plants, with the waste often disposed of into the sea. Luckily, sewage is principally biodegradable, meaning that it is broken down naturally by the environment. A further example to discuss would be how pig farm wastewater treatment is implement, with this process producing incredibly large volumes of waste. The wastewater is gathered in a central sump where biosolids and sludge are mechanically removed from the water. This purified water is transferred to an anaerobic digester where the organic matter decomposes and produces biogas, a product often used to generate electrical energy. The remaining organic matter is oxidized, and the enzymes and bacteria in combination with the air reduce the BOD and COD of the wastewater. There are eco-friendly ways to help the wastewater treatment which don’t use harmful chemicals as modern technology continues to develop. Reducing chemicals in the treatment process reduces pollution, reduces costs, and creates more sustainability.
Conclusion
Wastewater is still a huge problem in our modern age and needs to be treated effectively to help our environment improve. There are billions of people on our planet producing waste every day, so the treatment of sewage needs to be taken seriously. With this issue producing millions of gallons of wastewater, identifying the causes and acting on prevention methods will take humanity one step closer to making our world a better, more sustainable place. Hopefully, wastewater will become a thing of the past in an eco-friendlier future.
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