Is plastic the main source of ocean pollution?
You may have heard a lot about the dire state of our oceans recently, thanks to increased awareness of the dangers of plastic consumption and a slew of measures taken by governments and corporations around the world to reduce the impact of plastic pollution on our seas.
As bad as the plastic situation is, we've been clogging our seas by dumping millions of liters of untreated wastewater into them every day!
Petroleum waste, pesticide runoff, and even sedimentary waste are among the many pollutants that enter our seas from land. Offshore activities such as ocean-based dumping add to the pollution in our seas.
Human sewage, on the other hand, is one of the most significant contaminants in our clean blue waters.
That's right, poop!
However, it also includes wastewater from our washing machines, laundry, and kitchen drains. Wastewater containing organic waste from food scraps, as well as animal and vegetable matter. This sewage also contains oils and grease from organic waste, as well as a slew of chemicals from all of the cleaning products we use at home.
According to estimates, land-based pollutants such as sewage, municipal waste, and agricultural run-off account for 80 percent of all marine pollution.
Apart from all of the elements found in human sewage, this waste also contains persistent organic pollutants, radioactive material, heavy metals such as mercury and arsenic, and hydrocarbons, all of which individually (and collectively) cause untold damage to the water, marine ecosystems, and the environment, and because these are multi-generational cyclical issues, they end up posing grave threats to human lives and livelihoods.
All of this waste that ends up in our oceans then enters the food chain of marine life, and from there, it enters our food chain, causing diseases such as cancer, liver ailments, developmental issues, and affecting our immune and endocrine systems.
Untreated, or even partially treated, sewage raises the concentrations of pathogenic microbes in our oceans. Waterborne pathogens can cause contact illnesses and are frequently consumed inadvertently. Because they find hosts in the tissues of the seafood we eat, these microbes also cause foodborne illnesses.
One of the Sustainable Development Goals is to provide everyone with access to safe drinking water by 2030!
However, the definition of this goal is limited to immediate human needs. Clean water, on the other hand, is essential for aquatic plants and animals to survive and thrive.Our marine habitats require clean water not only for the life that lives within them, but also for the life that lives outside of them. Our oceans are incredible biodiversity hotspots, and this biodiversity cannot be sustained in the absence of clean water. The pathogens we are releasing into our waters have a direct impact on our health. From the standpoint of public health, it is critical that we ensure that our oceans contain clean water.
And the best way to keep our oceans clean is to ensure that all wastewater that enters our oceans is completely treated before it enters.
Municipal wastewater, which includes household and commercial wastewater, is required to be treated at wastewater treatment plants before it is released. However, these wastewater treatment plants frequently operate inefficiently, and the wastewater treatment techniques they employ may be inefficient. Septic tanks treat a large portion of domestic wastewater. However, because we end up dumping a lot of hazardous waste and chemicals into our waste, these septic tanks are also not performing as well as they should.
Add to that a lack of maintenance and the use of chemical solutions for remediation in septic tanks, and they end up leaching more wastewater into the ground than they treat. However, due to inefficient treatment practices, industrial wastewater is frequently not completely treated, and the effluent parameters end up far exceeding the prescribed norms.
Conclusion
The best solution to this problem is to ensure that all wastewater treatment utilizes biological treatment to the greatest extent possible. Biological treatment, which uses naturally occurring microbes, can degrade organic waste more completely, including residue left over from primary treatments.
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