WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT, TREATMENT AND RECYCLING

 FROM SAMPATH’S DESK:

    

  

 

WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT, TREATMENT AND RECYCLING

The sources of wastewater include inter alia, homes, shops, offices and factories, farms, transport and fuel depots, vessels, quarries, and mines. Water used in toilets, showers, baths, kitchen sinks, and laundries in homes and offices is domestic wastewater. In the present-day scenario, three types of wastewater assume importance; they are domestic sewage, industrial sewage, and storm sewage.

 

Once, John Snow, a physician in London, found himself in the middle of a devastating Cholera outbreak in 1854. In a painstaking investigation in the densely populated Soho district, he traced the source of the epidemic to a contaminated water pump on Broad Street, before knowledge of the causative organism. The epidemic subsided when the pump handle was subsequently removed. Snow’s work underscored the potential of disease prevention and control. It also leads us to a thought-provoking question: What could he have achieved with the tools of today? Could he have sounded the alarm bell at the earliest stages that an outbreak was imminent?

 

This hypothetical scenario is now a tangible reality. A recently published study in The Lancet Global Health reiterated the promise of using wastewater for public health surveillance. This strategy originally proposed more than 80 years ago to monitor the spread of poliovirus within communities, played a role in confirming India’s victory over poliovirus. It gained fresh relevance and momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic when it was identified as a reliable and failsafe approach for tracking the spread and control of SARS-CoV-2.

 

Wastewater can be sent to treatment plants, which, in turn, will gradually remove the pollutants. In the United States, these facilities process several billion gallons of water. This water usually contains nitrogen, phosphorus, and other harmful chemicals generated from our daily wastes - food including throwaways, soaps, shampoos, and liquid detergents, to mention a few. After cleaning the water as per local standards, the water is released to water bodies. While this might seem like an excellent solution at the outset, processed water can lead to nitrogen pollution if the impurities are not treated properly and safely.

 

That said, certain wastewater treatment units can remove large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous from the toxic water. This will entirely depend on the efficiency of the treatment systems.

 

While upgrading wastewater correction units might be expensive for towns and smaller cities, the upgrades will pave the way for a better ecological balance and a remarkably lower rate of water pollution.

 

Conserving water as much as possible and avoiding its excess use - intentionally or otherwise - is also an important solution. If we use less water, we will naturally generate less wastewater. This can be easily done by working on your plumbing leaks, cutting down on showering time, and avoiding the wastage of water in general. You can also start using water-conserving equipment to reduce the level of wastewater production. It will be interesting to note that this will also assist water treatment units to process the water better because, with fewer impurities, the treatment quality will obviously improve.

 

Again, the use of eco-friendly products helps avoid excess wastewater generation. Our household wastewater is often toxic owing to the high doses of chemicals in our everyday items. This issue can be avoided by purchasing sustainable, eco-friendly products. For instance, the purchase of products with low phosphorous and ammonia content helps reduce the level of phosphate in wastewater.

 

To sum up, water is a necessity for humans and other living organisms in order to live and carry on with various life processes. Using water in various activities such as bathing or cooking could produce wastewater, a type of waste that could be detrimental to human health. Wastewater is an alarming issue that is damaging our health and environment time and again. To combat the ill-effects of wastewater, consider switching to sustainable, eco-friendly practices. Remember, even the smallest lifestyle changes help proper and optimal use of water thereby reducing wastewater generation with a positive impact on our environment.

 

 

R.SAMPATH

12/7/2023