Impact of Water Pollution & Perspective Techniques to Mitigate It

Surface water pollution has a major role in degrading the water bodies in all aspects, including physical, chemical, and biological. An increase in usage of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, disposal of harmful waste chemicals from industries, and dumping of different inorganic waste ultimately increases the level of chemicals in the water bodies, thus resulting in greater damage to the aquatic life. Plastic waste, especially microplastic pollution, is also one of the major concerns for marine pollution. When dissolved in water, this microplastic releases harmful toxic chemicals that are lethal to flora and fauna. There are many drawbacks of these conventional treatment techniques, including high cost, space requirement, power usage, time-consuming method, and non-specific for certain pollutants, which will decrease the efficiency rate. The release of chemicals and heavy metals like cadmium, lead, and mercury accumulates in the waterbodies and affects not only aquatic life but also human health and the environment. To overcome this problem, various advanced techniques like activated sludge, rapid sand filtering, membrane bioreactor, etc., are used to remove the pollutants from the water bodies. This review focuses on the modern techniques that are found to be more efficient, eco-friendly, consume less energy, and are more reliable.