Water pollution is the major type of pollution occurs globally. Basically water pollution is the contamination of water in rivers, streams, lakes, pounds etc due to the chemicals, waste of industries, sewerage, household waste released in the water sources. The pollutants released by the industries households are increasing day by day and all this waste is dumped into freshwater or oceans. It effects on both aquatic as well as human life.
By Hafiz Talha Akhtar
Facts:
Water is a universal solvent. Most of the chemical reactions are take place in presence of water because of the good dissolving properties of water it dissolves most of the heavy metals and pollutants. When the concentration of heavy metals like NI, Cd, is increased these will cause respiratory problems in humans and aquatic animals. According to an estimate 100million animals are dyeing per annum and 1000 species of marine life are dying because of anthropogenic activities and waste released by industries in the water sources
Our earth is covered 97% of oceans only 3% Is available in the form of fresh water. The anthropogenic activities are polluted this source of fresh water. The 3% percent of fresh water is further distributed some of this is available for use while the remaining one is trapped in glaciers or other sources. I have listed below the distribution of this 3% percent fresh water.
69% is trapped in glaciers
30% underground
1% is in lakes, streams, pounds
As you know that only 1% is available in lakes, Streams, pounds and we contaminated this by an alarming rate.
Reason:
The major reason of water pollution in developing countries are
- Lack of awareness
- Bad govt policies
- Social economic barrier
- Monopoly of stakeholders
- Poor sanitary systems
Lack of proper dumping and wastage collection system
Above are the major reasons of water pollution in developing countries like Pakistan, India, etc because in the developing countries people are not willing to pay cost to pure and save the nature and the resources and main reason is illiteracy. Illiteracy rate of India Is 77% which shows that no awareness among the people regarding the conservation of natural resources. Moreover, stakeholders affect the policies of govt as they have their own industries. The major goal of stakeholders to protect their industries and generate these policies by which they don’t have to pay for the conservation of nature.
- Sources of water pollution
- Agriculture water
- Sewerage water
- Oil spills
- Radioactive substances
Marine dumping
The above sources of water pollution are very common. Agriculture sector is the big user of fresh water resources about 70% of earth fresh water is used by this sector when we apply fertilizer to the crops the residual chemicals mix with the rain fall water and pollute the ground water and lakes seas etc. used water is waste water it comes mostly from households and as a result of anthropogenic activities. According to UN 80% of worlds waste water is flow back to the environment. At sea, tanker spills account for about 10 percent of the oil in waters around the world, while regular operations of the shipping industry through both legal and illegal discharges contribute about one-third.
Effect on human health and aquatic life
WHO reports that 80% of diseases are water borne. The polluted water has negative effect on human health. Bacterial, viral, and parasitic diseases like typhoid, cholera, encephalitis, poliomyelitis, hepatitis, skin infection and gastrointestinal are spreading through polluted water. 10 % of population use the food that are growing using contaminated water. Viral diseases like hepatitis is a water borne disease which is increased due to the use of contaminated water. The polluted water in oceans has high concentration of heavy metals like cd, NI, Led, etc when the aquatic animals inhaled the water, they inhaled these heavy metals which cause blockage of respiratory system. As we know the food chain is connected with different ecosystems including oceans and when human gets these for food purpose, they will also get these heavy metals and these are causing respiratory and cancer problems in human population.
Remediation
Water is a natural non reusable resource we have to use it very wisely and we have to find the solution that how we can use it again and again, some of the remediation for water pollution are given below
Govt should develop policies which address the polluters and impose the fine and taxes on the industries which pollute the water.
Reduce the use of chemicals which pollute the environment
- Use Of bio absorbent
- Filtration technique
- Reverse osmosis
- Chemical precipitation
In addition to these methods we should also educate the people about the harms of water pollution.
Author: Hafiz Talha Akhtar