Water pollution

Kaushik Chanda, Ph.D

Assistant Professor
Organic Chemistry Division,
School of Advanced Sciences,
VIT University, Vellore – 14.
Water Pollution
 Water pollution
Definition:
 Water pollution is the contamination of water bodies.
(e.g. lakes, rivers, oceans, groundwater).
 It occurs when pollutants are discharged directly or indirectly into water bodies without
adequate treatment to remove harmful compounds.

Specific site near water

Point sources
which directly discharge
effluents into them.
Pollution

1. Surface runoff Non point sources Example:

from agricultural
field. 1. Industries

2.Overflowing small Not any particular site. These 2. Power plants

drains sources are scattered, which
3. Coal mines
individually or collectively pollute
3. Rain water sweeps water. 4. Off shore oil wells
road and fields,
fertilizer from fields, 5. septic tank.
automobile exhaust
Water pollutants: Industrial Pollutants, Inorganic Pollutants:
Industrial Pollutants
• 10 million new chemicals till date: Not enough time to test safety of each
• Of 66,000 new drugs, pesticides and other industrial chemicals: No safety data exists on
70% of them.
• MTBE (methyl tetraburate ethyl):
 Added to gasoline for cleaner burning
 Very soluble in water.

Inorganic Pollutants: Metals:

Metal: Often highly toxic, particularly the heavy metals (Hg, Cd, Pb, Zn…)
• Accumulate in bodies of animals and the concentration increases up a food chain
• Minamata Tragedy in Japan:
 Fish at the top of food chain had 50 ppm Hg
 By 1960 43 people died, 116 affected.

• Cadmium poisoning in Japan: itai-itai

• Lead: another potent source of poisoning, Required substitution and regular monitoring.

Other Inorganic Compounds

• Chlorine: harmful to aquatic life
• Industrial Acids: Now controlled
• Asbestos: Virulently carcinogenic
 Agricultural Pollution

• Fertilizers
– Nitrates, phosphates and potash

• Sediment Pollution

– 3 billion tons / year in US

– Reduces light, blankets bottom-habitats, fills up reservoirs,
damages power plants

• Herbicides and Pesticides

– Secondary breakdown products can be more toxic
– Alternative strategies:
• Use only when needed
• Use bacteria, sterilization or insect traps to control pests
 Water pollutants: Organic Pollutants
Organics (carbon-bearing compounds)
• Widespread use of herbicides and pesticides: Toxic, cumulative, carcinogenic
 DDT(Dichloro diphenyl trichloro ethane): repeated use results in resistant
strains
 Accumulative, toxic to fish, causes thinning of egg shells in birds; banned in
1972.

• Oil Spills and leaks: 10 million gallons in US waters every year

• Plastics: PCB (Polychlorinated biphenyls)

 Caused birth defects and other ailments
 Banned in US since 1977.
 900 million pounds already been produced

Problem of Control
• US industry produced 900 million tons of hazardous waste in 1984
• Cost of cleaning increases exponentially.
• Even after cleaning stockpile of waste is produced which require careful
handling.
 Types of Water pollution
1. Surface water pollution

2. Ground water pollution

1.Surface water pollution: Major sources are
1. Sewage
2. Industrial effluents
3. Synthetic detergents
4. Agrochemicals
5. Oil
6. waste heat
2.Ground water Pollution: Major sources are
1. Septic tanks
2. Industries
3. Deep well injection
4. Mining
Causes of water pollution:
1. Oxygen depletion 2. Eutrophication
3. Pathogens 4. Toxic compounds
1. Oxygen depletion:
Dissolved oxygen (DO) Oxygen saturation or is a relative measure of the
amount of oxygen that is dissolved or carried in a given medium.
DO = Dissolved O2 in a given quantity of water at a particular temperature &
pressure.
DO is highly depends on aeration, photosynthetic activity in water, respiration of
animals and plants.
This is consumed during degradation of organic compounds by micro-organisms.
DO varies from 8-15 mg/L.
Trout and salmon = 5-8 mg/L
Carp = 3.0 mg/L
DO = Dissolved O2 in a given quantity of water
at a particular temperature & pressure.

Problem: Lower DO is harmful to fish population.

This helps to release phosphate from bottom sediments = Eutrophication
2. Eutrophication: (Greek: eutrophia—healthy, adequate nutrition, development;
Eutrophication: It is the addition of artificial or natural substances, such as nitrates and
phosphates, through fertilizers or sewage, to an aquatic system.
In other terms, it is the "bloom" or great increase of phytoplankton in a water body.

Negative environmental effects include hypoxia, the depletion of oxygen in the water, which
induces reductions in specific fish and other animal populations.

Breakdown of excess organic matter (or fertilizer runoff from farm lands or phosphates
from detergents) also produces nitrates and phosphates which encourage growth of algae
leading to algal bloom.

Dead algae sinks to bottom and further increases organic load and increase BOD
% of eutrophic lakes in the farm belt:
Iowa: 100%, Ohio:84%, major problem in the Florida Bay and in parts of Everglades…2.
2. Eutrophication: can be human-caused or natural.
 Untreated sewage effluent and agricultural run-off carrying fertilizers

Addition of nutrients helps in the growth of the algae and plants which on
die and decay consume oxygen.
This will produce foul smelling gas.

3. Pathogens:
 Waste water contain disease causing micro organism and non pathogenic and virus.
 They produce water borne disease like cholera, dysentery, typhoid, jaundice.
 These disease spread through contaminated water.
4. Toxic Compounds:
1. Pesticides
2. Heavy metals
3. Cyanides
1. Pesticides:
Bioaccumulation and biomagnification = DDT
DDT, Aldrin, dieldrin are banned.
Recently people in Kerala, AP suffered from endosulphan cashew nuts.

Shruti young little girl in India has long been

exposed to aerial spraying of endosulfan.
2. Heavy metals:
Example: Mercury, Lead, Cadmium.

Minamata Disease:

Located on the coast of the Yatsushiro Sea in southwestern Japan.

The village was very poor. Mostly fishermen and farmers.

Villagers welcome Chisso Corporation for job.

1907: Chisso Corp. builds a nitrogen fertilizer plant in the Minamata.

1925: plant begins dumping untreated wastewater into Minamata Bay.

Fish at the top of food chain had 50 ppm Hg.

 By 1960, 43 people died, 116 affected.

Hg
Water soluble methyl mercury by bacterial action.
Mid 1950’s: Behavior Seen in Humans, Abnormal metal behaviour
Behaviors witnessed:
Loss of motor control in hands
Violent tremors
Swaggered walk
Insanity
“
Cat-dancing” disease
Nobody knew the cause of the epidemic.
Many hid for fear of ridicule

Numbness of body part

Vision and hearing problem
Abnormal metal behaviour
Itai-Itai: mass cadmium poisoning in Toyama Prefecture, Japan, starting around
1912.
The cadmium poisoning caused softening of the bones and kidney failure.
The disease is named for the severe pains (Japanese: itai) caused in the joints
and spine.
The term itai-itai disease was coined by locals.
The cadmium was released into rivers by mining companies in the mountains.
Due to the cadmium poisoning, the fish in the river started to die.
The cadmium and other heavy metals accumulated water was then used to
irrigate the rice fields. The rice absorbed heavy metals, especially the cadmium.
The cadmium accumulated in the people eating contaminated rice.

The weight of the kidney is usually decreased to around 60g, and to 30g's in cases with
non-specific inflammation or atherosclerotic change.
Arsenic pollution - Bangladesh and West Bengal = Abnormalities
 Nitrate pollution . Fluoride pollution
Blue baby syndrome or methaemoglobinemia:
Hemoglobin is converted into non-functional oxidized form due
to Nitrate pollution.

Fluoride pollution = Fluorosis = defects in teeth and bones.

1.Factories should not throw there waste in water bodies.
2.People should not bath and wash clothes in rivers or lakes.
3.People should not take there animals to take bath in rivers or lakes.
Sewage water:
The wastewater containing household, municipal, industrial waste is called sewage.
Sewage is nearly 99.5% water and 0.05% waste materials.
The strength is generally expressed in BOD or COD.
BOD:
Biological oxygen demand or BOD stands for the amount of oxygen regained by the
microorganism of polluted water to complete the decomposition of organic matter present
in the water at 20C for a period of 5 days.

BOD5 = (Dob – Doi)  Dilution factor mg/L

Significance of BOD:
1. It indicates the amount of decomposable organic matter present in the sewage.
2. It enables us to determine the degree of pollution.
3. BOD < 3 ppm = pure water, BOD  4 ppm = polluted water.

A survey of the river Yamuna recorded

BOD of 2000 at Delhi, 9000 at Mathura and 12,000 at Agra .
BOD is a chemical procedure for determining how fast biological organisms use
up oxygen in a body of water.

It is usually performed over a 5-day period at 20° Celsius.

It is used in water quality management and assessment, ecology and
environmental science.

BOD is not an accurate quantitative test, although it could be considered as an

indication of the quality of a water source.

#In environmental chemistry, the chemical oxygen demand (COD) test is

commonly used to indirectly measure the amount of organic compounds in water.

Most applications of COD determine the amount of organic pollutants found in

surface water (e.g. lakes and rivers), making COD a useful measure of water
quality.

It is expressed in milligrams per liter (mg/L), which indicates the mass of oxygen
consumed per liter of solution.
Older references may express the units as parts per million (ppm).

BOD < 3 ppm = pure water, BOD  4 ppm = polluted water.

COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand):
It is amount of oxygen required to chemically oxidise all the oxidizable impurities
present in the sewage using an oxidising agent like acidified K2Cr2O7.

COD = (V2-V1)  N  8  1000 / X mg/l

Significance of COD:
1. Determination of COD is carried out only in 3 hours, but BOD needs 5days.
2. It measures both the biologically oxidizable and inert organic matter.

Wastewaters should be properly treated by primary and secondary treatments to reduce

the BOD and COD upto permissible levels for discharge.

Wastewater treatment:
Objective:
1. To convert harmful compounds into harmless compounds.
2. To eliminate offensive smell.
3. To remove the solid content of the sewage.
4. To destroy the disease producing microorganism.
 Treatment Process

Preliminary Primary or settling process Secondary or biological

Solids and suspended impurities are removed by passing through mesh screens

1. Primary treatment
In this method mechanical screening and sedimentation of un-dissolved solids in
raw sewage is done.
But it fails to remove any dissolved substance from water.

2. Secondary treatment
Sewage treated in primary treatment is brought in contact with oxygen
and aerobic micro-organisms. They break down the organic matter into harmless
materials as CO2 and H2O.

Further, chlorination is done to reduce the bacteria.

It may be further treated to tertiary level zero measures are adopted for secondary
treatment.
They are (i) Trickling filter method (ii) Activated sludge process.
 Primary treatment Secondary treatment
Air Chlorination
Biodegradable org imp
Removed by aerobic bacteria
Primary Secondary
Waste
Screen Grit chamber Aeration setting tank Effluent
water setting tank
Coagulants : Tank filled with coarse,
Alum, FeSO4 crushed rock removes 80-85% BOD

Activated sludge

Primary sludge

Sludge Sludge
digestion dewatering
Supernatant tank
Sludge settle
down in this tank Anaerobic
Sludge disposal
digester

Flow diagram of sewage (waste water) treatment plant

 i) Trickling filter method
In this case sewage water passes through a thick bed of gravel stones so that
bacteria consume most of the organic matter.

ii) Activated sludge process

Here the sewage water is pumped into an aeration tank.
The tank contains sludge consisting of bacteria and algae.
The bacteria is able to decompose most of the organic matter and algae produces
oxygen to promote the growth of these decomposers.