Water Pollution and Its Impact Quiz

Biostimulation

• Involves stimulating naturally occurring microbial communities to break down contaminants by providing them with nutrients and other needs.
• Adds nutrients to a contaminated site to encourage the growth of naturally occurring chemical-degrading microorganisms.
• Methods include adding oxygen and various nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen, or elevating available carbon to increase naturally occurring microbes.
• Optimizes environmental conditions such as aeration, altering pH, and temperature control.

Bioremediation Approaches

• Bioaugmentation: selects organisms with high degradation abilities and inoculates the contaminated site with indigenous or exogenous microbial cultures.
• Biostimulation: stimulates naturally occurring microbial communities to break down contaminants.

Bioventing

• An in-situ remediation technology that uses microbes to biodegrade organic constituents in the groundwater system.
• Enhances indigenous bacteria's activity and stimulates natural in situ biodegradation of hydrocarbons by inducing oxygen or airflow into the unsaturated zone.
• Adds nutrients if necessary.

Water Pollution

• Pathogenic microbes can be introduced into natural water bodies from surface runoff from livestock grazing and untreated sewage.
• Physical pollution includes trash, sediment pollution, thermal, and other suspended loads.
• Thermal pollution occurs when industrial plants release artificially heated water into natural water environments, causing changes in growth rates or respiration.

Sources of Water Pollution

• Anthropogenic sources: deforestation, intensive farming and grazing, fertilizers, pesticides, industrialization, urbanization, different construction works, and automobiles.
• Natural processes: events like hurricanes and torrential rainfall, occasional overturn of water in lakes, thereby bringing water with no dissolved oxygen to the surface.

Bioremediation

• Focuses on stimulating the growth of certain microorganisms that use pollutants such as oil, solvents, and pesticides for food and energy sources.
• Microorganisms turn toxins into tiny quantities of water and harmless gases such as carbon dioxide.
• Requirements: right temperature, nutrients, and food combinations.
• Advantages: cost-effective, permanent solution, no need for extensive equipment and labor, nature-based process.
• Disadvantages: takes time, hard to measure and see the results, less predictable than conventional techniques, cannot completely break down some heavy metals.

Republic Act No. 9275 (Philippine Clean Water Act)

• Seeks to protect water bodies from pollution from land-based sources.
• Prohibits discharging or depositing water pollutants, removing or injecting pollutants into the soil, and operating facilities without valid permits.

Contaminants and Chemicals in Groundwater

• Microbiological contaminants: coliform bacteria, viruses, and parasites.
• Causes waterborne diseases such as polio, cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, and infectious hepatitis.
• Zinc is a significant sludge component, naturally present in water, and can cause unpleasant taste and health effects in high doses.