India is Heading towards a Grave Water Crisis : Save our Rivers

19/10/2017

Sukannya Mullick*

Each and every day we get to hear that our water bodies are getting polluted, being it a river or a lake or a sea or any ocean and how can never ignore the pollution of our groundwater in which the pollutants are getting contaminated by the process of percolation of rainwater or inland flow of water from the streams. What are we doing? Nothing…. And that’s the answer, because everybody is just advising to become aware of the water pollution but no one is just taking the first step to prevent it. Not even me, because knowingly or unknowingly; intentionally or unintentionally me too is polluting our water bodies in one or the other ways.

This widespread problem of water pollution is jeopardizing our health. Unsafe water kills more people each year than war and all other forms of violence combined. Meanwhile, our drinkable water sources are finite: Less than 1% of the earths freshwater are actually accessible to us. Without action, the challenges will only increase by 2050, when global demand for freshwater is expected to be one-third greater than it is now.

What are the causes of water pollution?

Today, river pollution has assumed alarming proportions. It has emerged as one of the most serious environmental threats in India. Both domestic and industrial reasons are contributing to this problem. Excessive use of soap, soda, bleaching powder, detergent or acids at home and chemicals in the industries are primarily responsible for water pollution. Urban sewage and industrial waste flows into the water sources without treatment. Despite all efforts of the Government in cities and towns, only 10 per cent of the total waste water is treated and rest of polluted material directly flows into ponds, rivers and ocean. 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.

Other factors of river pollution are

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 diarrhoea 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 through long pipes. 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, plastics 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.

Waste water   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 dishwasherseventually 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.

Chemical waste   Detergents are relatively mild substances. At the opposite end of the spectrum are highly toxic chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). They were once widely used to manufacture electronic circuit boards, but their harmful effects have now been recognized and their use is highly restricted in many countries. Nevertheless, an estimated half million tons of PCBs were discharged into the environment during the 20th century. In a classic example of Tran’s boundary pollution, traces of PCBs have even been found in birds and fish in the Arctic. They were carried there through the oceans, thousands of miles from where they originally entered the environment. Although PCBs are widely banned, their effects will be felt for many decades because they last a long time in the environment without breaking down.

Another kind of toxic pollution comes from heavy metals, such as lead, cadmium, and mercury. Lead was once commonly used in gasoline (petrol), though its use is now restricted in some countries. Mercury and cadmium are still used in batteries (though some brands now use other metals instead). Until recently, a highly toxic chemical called tributyltin (TBT) was used in paints to protect boats from the ravaging effects of the oceans. Ironically, however, TBT was gradually recognized as a pollutant: boats painted with it were doing as much damage to the oceans as the oceans were doing to the boats.

Radioactive waste   People view radioactive waste with great alarm—and for good reason. At high enough concentrations it can kill; in lower concentrations it can cause cancers and other illnesses. The biggest sources of radioactive pollution in Europe are two factories that reprocess waste fuel from nuclear power plants: Sellafield on the north-west coast of Britain and Cap La Hague on the north coast of France. Both discharge radioactive waste water into the sea, which ocean currents then carry around the world. Countries such as Norway, which lie downstream from Britain, receive significant doses of radioactive pollution from Sellafield. The Norwegian government has repeatedly complained that Sellafield has increased radiation levels along its coast by 6–10 times. Both the Irish and Norwegian governments continue to press for the plant's closure.

Oil pollution    When we think of ocean pollution, huge black oil slicks often spring to mind, yet these spectacular accidents represent only a tiny fraction of all the pollution entering our oceans. Even considering oil by itself, tanker spills are not as significant as they might seem: only 12 percent of the oil that enters the oceans comes from tanker accidents; over 70 percent of oil pollution at sea comes from routine shipping and from the oil people pour down drains on land. However, what makes tanker spills so destructive is the sheer quantity of oil they release at once — in other words, the concentration of oil they produce in one very much localized part of the marine environment. The biggest oil spill in recent years (and the biggest ever spill in US waters) occurred when the tanker Exxon Valdez broke up in Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1989. Around 12 million gallons (44 million litres) of oil were released into the pristine wilderness—enough to fill your living room 800 times over! Estimates of the marine animals killed in the spill vary from approximately 1000 sea otters and 34,000 birds to as many as 2800 sea otters and 250,000 sea birds. Several billion salmon and herring eggs are also believed to have been destroyed.

Plastics    If you've ever taken part in a community beach clean, you'll know that plastic is far and away the most common substance that washes up with the waves. There are three reasons for this: plastic is one of the most common materials, used for making virtually every kind of manufactured object from clothing to automobile parts; plastic is light and floats easily so it can travel enormous distances across the oceans; most plastics are not biodegradable (they do not break down naturally in the environment), which means that things like plastic bottle tops can survive in the marine environment for a long time. (A plastic bottle can survive an estimated 450 years in the ocean and plastic fishing line can last up to 600 years.)

While plastics are not toxic in quite the same way as poisonous chemicals, they nevertheless present a major hazard to seabirds, fish, and other marine creatures. For example, plastic fishing lines and other debris can strangle or choke fish. (This is sometimes called ghost fishing). About half of all the world's seabird species are known to have eaten plastic residues. In one study of 450 shearwaters in the North Pacific, over 80 percent of the birds were found to contain plastic residues in their stomachs. In the early 1990s, marine scientist Tim Benton collected debris from a 2km (1.5 mile) length of beach in the remote Pitcairn islands in the South Pacific. His study recorded approximately a thousand pieces of garbage including 268 pieces of plastic, 71 plastic bottles, and two dolls heads.

Alien species   Most people's idea of water pollution involves things like sewage, toxic metals, or oil slicks, but pollution can be biological as well as chemical. In some parts of the world, alien species are a major problem. Alien species (sometimes known as invasive species) are animals or plants from one region that have been introduced into a different ecosystem where they do not belong. Outside their normal environment, they have no natural predators, so they rapidly run wild, crowding out the usual animals or plants that thrive there. Common examples of alien species include zebra mussels in the Great Lakes of the USA, which were carried there from Europe by ballast water (waste water flushed from ships). The Mediterranean Sea has been invaded by a kind of alien algae called Caulerpa taxifolia. In the Black Sea, an alien jellyfish called Mnemiopsis leidyi reduced fish stocks by 90 percent after arriving in ballast water. In San Francisco Bay, Asian clams called Potamocorbula amurensis, also introduced by ballast water, have dramatically altered the ecosystem.

Effects of Water Pollution on Plants and Animals

Increase in toxic substances   Due to water pollution, the river Ganga which is regarded by Indians as a sacred river in which they take a holy dip to purify themselves has also become highly polluted. The same is true of Yamuna, Gomati, Chambal as well as Jhelum rivers. If today, the river Hooghly is considered among the most polluted rivers in the world, it is only due to water pollution. Some time ago, the water in the Gomati River in Lucknow had become so polluted and toxic at one time that dead fish floating all through it had become a common scenario.

Harming growth of aquatic plants   Aquatic plants get severely affected due to water pollution. Due to plethora of moss in the polluted water of the rivers, the sun light fails to reach to the depths of the river which affects the growth of aquatic plants in the lack of photosynthesis.  In the polluted water of the rivers, some aquatic weed as aquatic ferns and water hyacinth start increasing. Similarly, the sewage water getting mixed into the water of the rivers, helps in the increase of fungus, algae, bacteria, etc which start to erupt faster.

Suffocating aquatic creatures   Increasing pollution in the sea and oceanic areas has become a threat. Polluted water makes the life of aquatic organism miserable. Water pollution reduces the level of oxygen in it. According to a survey in most of the rivers, the amount of oxygen in a litre of water has decreased to 0.1 cubic centimetres only, while this average in 1940 was around 2.5 cubic centimetres.

Different varieties of fish are the most affected creatures due to water pollution. Fish and other aquatic organisms start dying due to lack of oxygen in the polluted water. Hydrocarbons in the oil spread on the surface of the oceans due to which marine and aquatic organisms do not get the oxygen and they die consequently. Things have become so alarming that many aquatic species are on the brink of extinction.

Polluted water also negatively impacts the breeding power of aquatic life. It makes fish and plants deficient in their ability to regenerate and reproduce. Also, animals fall prey to a variety of diseases due to drinking polluted water.

Spoiling Natural beauty    Contaminated water is not only unsuitable for drinking but also for agriculture purposes. It is also responsible for destroying the beauty of the lakes and rivers.

Effects of Water Pollution on Human Health

Polluted water leads to the worst effect on human health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), every year due to contaminated water 50 million persons become the victims of death. About 360 persons per one lakh die in India and over 50 per cent patients getting admitted in hospitals are the patients of water borne diseases. The situation in underdeveloped countries is even worse where over 80 per cent of the patients are suffering from the diseases born out of polluted water.

Spreading various diseases   Microbes, toxins and water containing unnecessary amounts of salts give rise to many diseases. Around the globe more than 80 per cent of diseases are due directly or indirectly to polluted water. As per an estimate, almost 2.5 million people in over 34000 villages of India are suffering from cholera. Millions of tribal villagers in Rajasthan are suffering from various diseases due to drinking dirty water from the ponds. Contaminated water contains a variety of disease-causing bacteria that results in several types of ailment.

According to the scientists, a large number of diseases in India can be attributed to drinking of sewage mixed water. Various diseases like polio, cholera, patches, jaundice, fever, viral fever etc. are spread through polluted water. Polluted water  contains lead which when consumed by the humans while drinking water leads to producing various ailments such as joint pain, kidney disease and heart disease in them.

The waterborne diseases are infectious which spread primarily from polluted water. Hepatitis, cholera, dysentery and typhoid are the common waterborne diseases, which affect the majority of tropical area.  Apart from diarrhoea, and breathing problems, drinking polluted water causes skin diseases. If the polluted water gets stagnated, it becomes a breeding ground for mosquito and many other parasites which are very common in tropical areas.

Children often get sick if they drink polluted water and sometimes they even die due to intensity of the diseases.  As per an estimate, 13 children die per hour in India, due to diarrhoea caused by contaminated water.Polluted water is like poison for human beings. Large amounts of chloride in drinking water deform the spine which becomes snaky and their teeth go yellow, start falling and moreover their hands and feet lose flexibility of the bones and their body deforms. It also increases the risk of kidney diseases. A large amount of sulphide in polluted water is the reason of various respiratory diseases and drinking water contaminated with urea increases intestinal disorder. Thus continuous intake of contaminated drinking water is the reasons behind various stomach related disorders and other diseases like lumps in throat, tooth decay, etc.

Composition of nitrate resulting from fertilizer and chemicals used in agricultural lands, waste dumps or pit latrines causes contamination of the groundwater. Such contaminated drinking water is the reason of blue baby disease in kids which changes their skin colour. In this disease, nitrate contamination in groundwater results in decreased oxygen carrying capacity of haemoglobin in babies, leading to their death.

Radioactive substances produced from nuclear explosions also reach the water bodies and makes drinking water severely contaminated. If one uses this water, one can fall a victim to terrible diseases like cancer. The use of such water also increases the risk of having children with disabilities.

Rendering drinking water unsafe   It is due to water pollution, the drinking water becomes smelly and distasteful. Micro-organisms present in the water gives the water unpalatable taste. When organic substances in the polluted water start decaying, it produces hydrogen sulphide and ammonia gas which gives the water very bad smell.

Affecting industrial units   The ability of industries also gets reduced due to water pollution as it affects the performance of industrial units. For instance, Kanpur’s leather units have got adversely affected by the use of polluted water of the Ganga.

Contamination of water bodies   Water pollution causes all water bodies such as lakes, rivers, oceans, and groundwater to get contaminated and certainly human activities are responsible for these conditions. Making self-interest their priority, man violates various established laws and regulations and drains various harmful substances coming out from the factories directly into the water sources. The harmful elements found in industrial waste include various chemicals, grease, oil, paint, iron, cadmium, lead, arsenic, zinc, etc. It has also been observed that some industry associations also drain radio-active substances into the water sources which destroy organisms and plants instantly and are extremely harmful.

The Ministry of Environment and Forest has marked some industries which are mainly polluting the water bodies. These are wine industry, petrochemical, skin purifier industry, paper industry, fertilizer industry, pharmaceutical industry, and sugar industry.

Diseases Caused by Pathogenic Organisms in Contaminated Water

The factors causing most harm to human health through contaminated water are pathogenic microbes. Based on these, diseases generated by contaminated water are divided into the following main categories:

By virus   Jaundice (Yellow Fever), polio, gastroenteritis, common cold, infectious liver Sod, and smallpox.

By bacteria   Diarrhoea, loose motions, paratyphoid, high fever, cholera, whooping cough, gonorrhoea, syphilis, gastroenteritis, dysentery, and tuberculosis.

By protozoa   Pyorrhoea, dysentery, narcolepsy (epidemic encephalitis), malaria, amoebiasis, and giardiasis.

By worm   Filariasis, hydatid cyst and a variety of worm disease (various types of stomach worms).

Leptospirosis disease   In addition to organisms that cause disease in our body, various types of toxic substances harm our health reaching our body through water. The main toxic elements among them include cadmium, lead, nickel, silver, arsenic, etc.

·         Excess quantities of iron, manganese, calcium, barium, chromium, copper, cilium, boron, and other salts such as nitrate, sulphate, borate, carbonate, etc in water have adverse effects on human health.

·         The excess of magnesium and sulphate in water irritates the intestines.

·         In children, the excess of nitrate leads to the disease methemoglobinemia and generates stomach cancer by reaching the intestine.

·         Fluorosis is a disease caused by excess of fluorine.

·         Excess level of mercury in fish is dangerous especially for small children and pregnant women or nursing women. It interferes with the central nervous system development in the foetuses and young children.

Basic Things We Can Do To Reduce Water Pollution

“Just because it disappears, doesn’t mean it goes away”

1. DO NOT pour fat from cooking or any other type of fat, oil, or grease down the sink. Keep a “fat jar” under the sink to collect the fat and discard in the solid waste when full.
2. DO NOT dispose off household chemicals or cleaning agents down the sink or toilet.
3. DO NOT flush pills, liquid or powder medications or drugs down the toilet. For recommendations on proper disposal for all types of medical wastes, visit the CT DEP publication.
4. Avoid using the toilet as a wastebasket. Most tissues, wrappers, dust cloths, and other paper goods should be properly discarded in a wastebasket. The fibre reinforced cleaning products that have become popular should never be discarded in the toilet.
5. Avoid using a garbage disposal. Keep solid wastes solid. Make a compost pile from vegetable scraps.
6. Install a water efficient toilet. In the meantime, put a brick or 1/2 gal container in the standard toilet tank to reduce water use per flush.
7. Run the dishwasher or clothes washer only when you have a full load. This conserves electricity and water.
8. Use the minimum amount of detergent and/or bleach when you are washing clothes or dishes. Use only phosphate free soaps and detergents.
9. Minimize the use of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers. DO NOT dispose of these chemicals, motor oil, or other automotive fluids into the sanitary sewer or storm sewer systems. Both of them end at the river.
10. If your home has a sump pump or cellar drain, make certain it does not drain into the sanitary sewer system. If you are unsure, please call Simsbury Water Pollution Control at (860) 658-1380 and we can assist in determining the discharge point.

Conclusion

Aren’t we aware of the different problems occurring in our nature, especially in different bodies of water? We, humans are only creatingproblems that consequently we will also carry the burden of these problems.We all know that water pollution can affect our health badly and seriously. Itcan cause such sicknesses and diseases that will badly affect our health. Weall know how important water is. Water is essential to our body. Neither we nor any living thing can survive without water. And so therefore, weshould keep, protect, save, and help prevent our waters from being polluted,we should act as early as now, we should save rivers, seas and oceans, andother bodies of water because we will also bear the burden of this problem.We should not wait for the time until people are competing just to getsufficient, fresh and clean water, the time where clean water is insufficient tothe people and animals, and the time where in our sources of water arediminishing or until the time where there are totally no sources of water. Let’s just realize how important our mother nature is. It is our only source of living. Let us not destroy it nor pollute it. Let us act for a change. We need and we should help save and conserve our mother nature, especially the different bodies of water. Absolutely, there are many simple ways in how we can help. Change ourselves before we construct changes in our nature. Act right now!

* Honours First Year, 2017