WATER POLLUTION

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Christian G. Cayetano

Wenceslao L. Palma Gil PhD

2019
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title page

Table of contents 1

Introduction 2-3

What is Water Pollution? 4

Global 5-7

National (PHILIPPINES) 8-9

Local (DAVAO CITY) 10 - 11

What is Pollutants?

What are the different types of Pollutants?

Pathogens

Inorganic Materials

Organic Materials

Macroscopic Material

Siltation

Eutrophication

References
INTRODUCTION

Around 71% of our Earth is made up of water and all living things and beings require
water as a source of survival. I have decided to focus on water and water pollution for the
very fact that water is such an essential part in our lives it has sometimes become taken
for granted.
Simply put, water pollution is the contamination of water bodies such as lakes, rivers,
oceans, aquifers and groundwater. Such an environmental degradation occurs when
pollutants are directly or indirectly discharged into water bodies without proper and/or
adequate treatment to remove harmful chemicals and compounds. Water pollution is a
global problem to varying degrees as we will see in subsequent blog posts as I seek to
present different case studies.

(https://ecowaterpollution.wordpress.com/graphs/)
As an introduction, there are two main types of water pollution (Hill, 2010): point source
and nonpoint source pollution. As its name suggests, the former identifies any single
identifiable source from which the pollutant is discharged (e.g. ship, pipe), which makes
it fairly easy to trace. In the case of nonpoint source pollution, there is no specific source
that can be identified such as surface water runoff in a watershed and therefore is harder
to control than point source pollution.

Water pollution has seen itself to bring about many implications to our daily lives yet many
are unaware of just how lethal water pollution can be to us. In the next post, I will seek to
elaborate on how water pollution affects us humans along with animals and also some
efforts that have been taken to reduce the occurrences of water pollution.
WHAT IS WATER POLLUTION?

Water pollution is defined as the presence in groundwater of toxic chemicals and

biological agents that exceed what is naturally found in the water and may pose a threat
to human health and/or the environment. Additionally, water pollution may consist of
chemicals introduced into the water bodies as a result of various human activities. Any
amount of those chemicals pollutes the water, regardless of the harm they may pose to
human health and the environment.

Not only does this spell disaster for aquatic ecosystems, the pollutants also seep through
and reach the groundwater, which might end up in our households as contaminated water
we use in our daily activities, including drinking.

Any kind of water can become polluted, regardless of its size or location. This includes
lakes from remote areas or huge water bodies and is due to the air transportation of
pollutant particles and their transfer into precipitation water. The groundwater and surface
water consist of swimming pools, ponds, lakes, creeks, rivers, seas, and oceans that may
all become polluted at some point. Due to the quick diffusion and dissipation of
contamination and the faster natural degradation processes, the bigger the water body
is, the shorter the time required for naturally cleansing the pollution and recovery.
GLOBAL

A 2016 preliminary assessment of the water quality situation in rivers in Latin America,
Africa and Asia, A Snapshot of the World’s Water Quality, estimates that severe
pathogenic pollution affects around one third of all rivers, severe organic pollution around
one seventh of all rivers, and severe and moderate salinity pollution around one-tenth of
all rivers in these regions.

Once water is contaminated, it is difficult, costly, and often impossible to remove the
pollutants. Still today, 80 per cent of global wastewater goes untreated, containing
everything from human waste to highly toxic industrial discharges. The nature and amount
of pollutants in freshwater determines the suitability of water for many human uses such
as drinking, bathing, and agriculture. In addition, pollution of freshwater ecosystems can
impact the habitat and quality of life of fish and other wildlife.

The global water crisis also involves water pollution. For water to be useful for drinking
and irrigation, it must not be polluted beyond certain thresholds. According to the World
Health Organization, in 2008 approximately 880 million people in the world (or 13% of
world population) did not have access to safe drinking water. At the same time, about 2.6
billion people (or 40% of world population) lived without improved sanitation, which is
defined as having access to a public sewage system, septic tank, or even a simple pit
latrine. Each year approximately 1.7 million people die from diarrheal diseases associated
with unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene. Almost all of these
deaths are in developing countries, and around 90% of them occur among children under
the age of 5, the water crisis is the issue of social justice; poor people more commonly
lack clean water and sanitation than wealthy people in similar areas. Globally, improving
water safety, sanitation, and hygiene could prevent up to 9% of all disease and 6% of all
deaths.
In addition to the global waterborne disease crisis, chemical pollution from
agriculture, industry, cities, and mining threatens global water quality. Some chemical
pollutants have serious and well-known health effects, whereas many others have poorly
known long-term health effects. In the U.S. currently more than 40,000 water bodies fit
the definition of “impaired” set by EPA, which means they could neither support a healthy
ecosystem nor meet water quality standards. In Gallup public polls conducted over the
past decade Americans consistently put water pollution and water supply as the top
environmental concerns over issues such as air pollution, deforestation, species
extinction, and global warming.

Pollution in freshwater ecosystems can include pathogens (largely from human and
animal waste), organic matter (including plant nutrients from agricultural run-off such as
nitrogen or phosphorus), chemical pollution and salinity (from irrigation, domestic
wastewater and runoff of mines into rivers). Plastic pollution, and emerging pollutants
such as pharmaceuticals, also increasingly put our world’s waterways at risk, but the
extent and impacts of their presence in our freshwater is largely unknown.

(https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/envirobiology/chapter/7-3-water-pollution/)
The Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-
based Activity concentrates on the regulation and reduction of wastewater, marine litter
and nutrient loading.

The GEMS/Water programme supports countries in monitoring and reporting on water

quality.

UN Environment promotes nature-based solutions to water resources management,

including for water quality, and is contributing to the topic for the 2018 World Water
Day and 2018 World Water Development Report, coordinated by UNESCO WWAP
(World Water Assessment Programme).

UN Environment is also the global custodian of Sustainable Development Goal

(SDG) target 6.3.2, helping countries understand, measure and report on ambient water
quality.
NATIONAL (PHILIPPINES)

Katrina Arianne Ebora, part of UNICEF’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene program in the
Philippines, notes that access to adequate sanitation facilities is a problem for more
than 30 million Filipinos. Unfortunately, this rapid development has come at a price of
increased water pollution, with 47% of all surveyed water bodies in the country having
good water quality, 40% having only fair water quality, and 13% having poor water quality.
Around 50 of the 421 rivers in the Philippines are now considered to be “biologically dead,”
supplying sufficient oxygen for only the most hardly species to survive there.

This portion of the population is forced to spend considerable time, effort and energy in
procuring water. Families without a sanitary toilet often face the embarrassment of
venturing outside to relieve themselves. Some resort to asking their neighbors to utilize
their sanitary toilet facilities.

Environmental group Greenpeace has previously warned that Filipinos in key agricultural
areas are drinking water contaminated with nitrates. After conducting a study on important
farming areas, Greenpeace warned that nitrate levels were alarmingly above the safety
limits set by the World Health Organization (WHO). The group also noted that “drinking
water from 30 percent of all groundwater wells sampled in [the Philippines and Thailand]
showed nitrates levels above the WHO safety limit of 50 mg l-1 of nitrate.”

Due to water pollution in the Philippines, the country is likely to face a shortage of
water for sanitation, drinking, agriculture and industrial purposes in the next ten years.

In an Asia Development Bank report, the Philippines’ regional group – which includes
Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam – has made
gains in improving water security. However, the region is home to a sixth of the global
population and the poorest people in the world. With agriculture consuming a staggering
80 percent of the region’s water, the region is a global hotspot for water insecurity.
 (https://ecowaterpollution.wordpress.com/graphs/)

Water conservation efforts in the Philippines by many local and international companies
have protected the water supplies for future use. Coca-Cola has pledged nearly $1.4
million for a five-year project with the World Wildlife Fund to protect the capital’s drinking
water source, the Ipo Watershed. The Cement Manufacturers’ Association of the
Philippines, an industry that heavily uses water, has started initiatives to capture and
utilize rainwater for many production needs.
LOCAL (DAVAO CITY)

BEACHES in Davao City are highly polluted with coliform while Samal Island’s waters are
still within the standards for coliform presence, according to a 2015 study released during
a meeting of Regional Inter-Agency Committee on Environmental Health (Riaceh) on
Wednesday.

WATER at the Davao River and the peripheral beaches where it flows out into the Davao
Gulf have registered very high coliform levels and are not considered safe for bathing,
according to the Department of Health (DoH) and the Environment Management Bureau
(EMB).

The study was conducted by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources
Environmental Management Bureau (DENR-EMB) on the level of coliform in Davao Gulf.
Coliform are rod-shaped bacteria commonly associated with feces of animals and
humans.

On Friday's Kapehan sa Abreeza Mall, Gloria Raut of the Department of Health (DOH)
said that the city's beaches have high coliform content due to "high coliform content in
Davao River and the lack of septage facilities where household dump their wastes to the
water." According to Maria Socorro Mallare of the EMB-Davao, the highest fecal coliform
reading in a sampling station in Davao River amounted to 16-million MPN (most probable
number) per 100 liters. The passable standard is 200 MPN/ per 100 liters.
Total coliform reading also reached 16 million MPN/100 liters as compared to the
standard of 1000 MPN/100 liters. These readings are located in the downstream areas.

EMB study sampling stations in Davao City beaches also showed above normal coliform
content. The most polluted is Liberty beach near the mouth of Davao River which has
total coliform reading of 160,115 MPN/100 liters and fecal coliform reading of 123,433
MPN/100liters.
Talomo Beach Resort sample has a total coliform reading of 36,971 MPN and fecal
coliform of 21,984. Beaches sampled included Guinoo Beach, Bonguyan Beach, Seagull,
COACO, Bago Beach, Lanang Aplaya, Kalayaan Beach Resort, Mergrande and Marina
Azul I.

On the Island Garden City of Samal, only Camp Holiday have higher than standard fecal
coliform content at 237 MPN/1000 liters. But it is still below the standard range for total
coliform content as it registered 328 MPN/100 liters.
WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF POLLUTANTS?

A pollutant is a substance or energy introduced into the environment that has undesired
effects, or adversely affects the usefulness of a resource. A pollutant may cause long- or
short-term damage by changing the growth rate of plant or animal species, or by
interfering with human amenities, comfort, health, or property values. Some pollutants
are biodegradable and therefore will not persist in the environment in the long term.
However, the degradation products of some pollutants are themselves polluting such as
the products DDE and DDD produced from degradation of DDT.

PATHOGENS

A pathogen or infectious agent is a biological agent that causes disease or illness to its
host. The term is most often used for agents that disrupt the normal physiology of a
multicellular animal or plant. However, pathogens can infect unicellular organisms from
all of the biological kingdoms.

There are several substrates and pathways whereby pathogens can invade a host.
The human body contains many natural defences against some of common pathogens
in the form of the human immune system and by some "helpful" bacteria present in the
human body's normal flora. Some pathogens have been found to be responsible for
massive amounts of casualties and have had numerous effects on afflicted groups.

Today, while many medical advances have been made to safeguard against infection
by pathogens, through the use of vaccination, antibiotics and fungicide, pathogens
continue to threaten human life.
Social advances such as food safety, hygiene, and water treatment have reduced the
threat from some pathogens.
REFERENCES

Hill. M.K. (2010). Water Pollution. Understanding Environmental Pollution. pp. 236-285.
3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available from: Cambridge Books
Online. [Accessed 20 August 2016] (https://blog.nus.edu.sg/klarissayow/2016/08/22/an-
introduction-to-water-pollution/)

https://www.unenvironment.org/explore-topics/water/what-we-do/tackling-global-water-
pollution

https://borgenproject.org/water-pollution-in-the-philippines/

https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/envirobiology/chapter/7-3-water-pollution/

https://www.environmentalpollutioncenters.org/water/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollutant

https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/pathogen.htm