Introduction

Water is essential to life. Yet water pollution is one of the most serious ecological threats we face today.

Water pollution happens when toxic substances enter water bodies such as lakes, rivers, oceans and so
on, getting dissolved in them, lying suspended in the water or depositing on the bed. This degrades the
quality of water.

Leachate is a liquid that drains or ‘leaches’ from landfills. It usually comes from rain, snow melts or from
the waste itself. Its composition can vary widely depending on the age of the landfill and the type of waste
that it contains. It usually contains both dissolved and suspended materials.

Biochemical oxygen demand, or BOD, is a chemical procedure for determining the amount of dissolved
oxygen needed by aerobic biological organisms in a body of water to break down organic material present
in a given water sample at certain temperature over a specific time period.

Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) is a measurement of the oxygen-depletion capacity of a water sample
contaminated with organic waste matter. Specifically, it measures the equivalent amount of oxygen
required to chemically oxidize organic compounds in water.

HOW TO MITIGATE THE POLLUTION

5 ways to reduce the water pollution

1) Sewage Treatment Reduces water pollution

https://www.slideshare.net/april.cruda/water-pollution-43696530
1) Reduce Use of Potential Pollutants

By reducing our usage of likely water pollutants, we can stop water quality issues at their source and
prevent them even having the chance to enter the water supply.

Reducing our use of single-use plastics may help to prevent this problem. Other pollutants we can
reduce our consumption of include fertilizers, pesticides, cleaning chemicals, oil and many others.

2) Treatment Before Discharge

An estimated 80 percent of wastewater gets dumped back into the environment without proper
treatment. Even high-income countries only treat 70 percent of their wastewater, and the percentage is
much lower in low-income nations.

Overall, wastewater treatment has improved over the years, but advancing it further could have a
significant impact on water pollution. We should aim for adequate treatment of all wastewater from
every industrial and sewage facility around the world.

Advancing adequate discharge treatment means both improving the technologies we use to treat water
and expanding access to that technology in low-income parts of the country and the world.

3) Minimize and Filter Runoff

Agricultural is responsible for approximately 70 percent of water withdrawals worldwide. Substantial

amounts of that water ends up running off of farms and back into waterways. As it does so, it carries
with it fertilizers, pesticides and other polluting substances. This runoff can also come from lawns, and
rainwater washes additional pollutants into waterways.

The phosphorus and nitrogen in these fertilizers can cause algal blooms that deplete the water of
oxygen and make it uninhabitable for fish and other marine life.

Using fewer artificial fertilizers and pesticides can help prevent this problem, as can irrigating land
more efficiently using drip irrigation to prevent excessive water use. Planting buffers of trees and
shrubs near bodies of water can also help because these plants help filter out pollutants from runoff.

4) Contain and Clean Up Spills

While prevention is the best approach, we also need to action when a spill does occur. This cleanup can
range from picking up litter at the beach to the huge operations required to clean up an oil spill.

If an oil spill occurs, we can use floating containment booms to stop the oil from spreading and then use
oil skimmers to remove the substance from the surface of the water. By this point, though, the spill has
already likely caused some damage.

We are also taking steps to clean up pollutants that have been in the water for a long time.
5) Laws and Regulations

Laws and regulations can also help to prevent and mitigate pollution, if they are effectively designed and
enforced. Local, state and federal laws, as well as international efforts, set limits on pollution and
create accountability for those who might otherwise dump contaminants.

For these regulations to work well, they should be based on science and designed in a way that prevents
loopholes and makes them easy to understand. They also need to be enforced honestly without
improper exceptions.