Solid Waste Management Quiz

Soil Pollution

• Soil pollution is defined as contamination of soil by human and natural activities causing harmful effects on living organisms.
• Sources of pollutants include industrial wastes, urban wastes, agricultural practices (pesticides, salts, fertilizers), radioactive pollutants, and biological agents (animal and human excreta).
• Industrial pollutants are mainly discharged from various sources like pulp and paper mills, chemical factories, oil refineries, sugar factories, tanneries, textiles, steel plants, distilleries, fertilizer facilities, pesticide plants, coal and mineral mining industries, drug factories, glass factories, cement plants, petroleum refineries, and engineering industries.
• These pollutants affect soil chemical and biological properties, entering the human food chain from soil or water, disrupting biochemical processes, and causing significant harm to living organisms.
• Urban wastes include commercial and domestic waste, consisting of dried sludge, sewage, garbage, rubbish (plastics, glass, metal cans, fibers, paper, rubber, street sweepings, fuel residues, leaves, containers).
• Although disposed separately from industrial waste, urban domestic waste can be dangerous due to slow degradation.
• Agricultural practices pollute soil through fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and weedicides used to increase crop yield.
• Apart from these, farm wastes like manure, slurry, debris, soil erosion carrying mostly inorganic chemicals, contribute to soil pollution.
• Common insecticide and herbicide groups include organochlorines (DDT, Aldrin, Heptachlor), carbamates, phenoxyacetic acids (2,4-D, 2,4,5-T), toluidines, triazines, phenylureas, bipyridyls, and glycines.
• These persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have designed uses, like controlling soil insects, protecting wood, controlling crops, termites, and rodents.
• POPs have major concerns including toxicity to humans, biomagnification in food webs, and high persistence, particularly in aquatic systems.
• Radioactive substances from nuclear testing, laboratories, and industries result in nuclear dust and radioactive wastes contaminating the soil.
• Radioactive nuclides like radium, thorium, uranium, potassium-40, and carbon-14 are found in soil, rock, water, and air.
• Explosions of hydrogen weapons and cosmic radiations cause reactions that result in nitrogen producing carbon-14, essential for carbon-based metabolism, and then into animals and humans.
• Radioactive wastes contain strontium-90, iodine-129, cesium-137, iron isotopes, and other damaging isotopes.
• Soil contamination affects human health through direct contact, inhalation of vaporized contaminants, and contamination of groundwater.
• This can cause congenital disorders, leukemia, kidney damage, liver toxicity, neuromuscular blockage, depression, headaches, nausea, fatigue, eye irritation, skin rash, and irreversible diseases.
• Heavy metals in soil contamination include mercury, lead, arsenic, chromium, and cadmium,
• Heavy metal sources include industrial effluent, batteries, pipes, and chemicals.
• Heavy metals have harmful effects like irreversible neurological damage, and in some cases, cause mutations in algae and bacteria and cause blackening in fish, gradual paralysis in humans, and accumulation in hair, nails, and skin.
• Soil pollution control measures include planting trees, contour cultivation, reducing and limiting deforestation, replacing chemical manures with animal wastes, proper dumping of wastes, and using biopesticides and natural fertilizers instead of toxic chemicals.
• Proper sanitation habits, hygiene conditions, public awareness, waste recycling and reuse, banning toxic chemicals including DDT and BHC, and proper disposal of radioactive waste are also crucial for mitigating soil pollution.

Hazardous Waste

• Hazardous waste is a waste with properties making it dangerous or potentially harmful to human health and the environment.
• Properties include ignitability (easily catching fire), corrosivity (corroding metals, pH ≤ 2 or ≥ 12.5), and reactivity (instability, explosions, toxic fumes, gases, or vapors from water mixing).
• Major types of hazardous wastes include heavy metals (like mercury, lead, arsenic, chromium, and cadmium), radioactive wastes, and bio-medical wastes.

Toxic Elements

• Lead (Pb) is associated with combustion of leaded petrol/gasoline.
• Lead is also found in batteries, pipes, and soldiering.
• Also in the preparation of insecticides (lead arsenate), paints, pigments, varnishes, hair dyes, and in canned and painted toys, etc.

Cadmium (Cd)

• Sources of Cd pollution include industrial effluent, cadmium-nickel batteries, nuclear fission plants, and water pipes.
• It interferes with essential enzymatic functions due to its size and charge similarities to Zinc, inhibiting essential enzyme function, causing kidney damage and renal dysfunction, and hypertension, in bone marrow, stomach and intestine disorders, etc

Arsenic (As)

• Natural sources include rocks, and agricultural use of chemicals such as arsenic oxides, lead arsenate, fungicides, pesticides, herbicides.
• Mining, extraction, and glass industry also contribute.
• As(III) compounds are toxic, it attacks sulfhydryl groups of enzymes, and inhibits enzyme action, interferes with biochemical processes, and inhibits ATP production.
• The antidote for arsenic poisoning is 2,3-dimercaptopropanol (BAL), which combines with arsenic to remove it from the body.
• Major effects include liver damage, central nervous system necrosis and cirrhosis, bone marrow damage, and skin cancer.

Mercury (Hg)

• Major sources include the chloroalkali industry (manufacturing Cl2 and NaOH through electrolytic process), electrical equipment (lamps, switches), and agricultural fungicides.
• Mercury enters the food chain, accumulating in organisms like plankton, insects, small fish, birds, and large fish, ultimately affecting human consumption.
• Mercury's adverse effects include blurred vision, deafness, mental disorders, and kidney damage, demonstrated by Minamata disease.

Solid Waste

• Solid waste are unwanted or useless materials, including rubbish, trash, refuse, and byproducts of metabolic processes, which should be properly managed to avoid environmental pollution.
• Sources of solid wastes include households, commerce, and industry.
• Types of solid wastes include biodegradable and non-biodegradable categories, hazardous and nonhazardous wastes, industrial waste, municipal solid waste, bio-medical waste, fishery waste, and e-waste.
• Solid waste management involves collection, storage, transportation, recycling, treatment, and disposal.
• Land filling is a method to dispose solid waste, where wastes are spread in thin layers over a low-lying land and covered by soil for effective waste disposal to prevent scattering.
• Incineration is the combustion of solid waste at high temperatures to reduce volume and detoxify harmful components.
• Composting is the aerobic degradation of organic materials under controlled conditions producing a marketable soil, rich in organic matter.
• Environmental Impact Assessments are important for evaluating the environmental effects of proposed developments, and potential damage to the environment prior to a final decision by authorities.
• Proper planning and execution of waste management practices are crucial to mitigate negative environmental impacts of solid waste disposal and to preserve resources.

Test your knowledge on solid waste management and pollution control with this comprehensive quiz. Explore methods of waste disposal, the significance of organic fertilizers, and the importance of public awareness. Dive into key concepts like the 3R technique and the role of sanitization in managing waste effectively.