Water Quality & Effects in Health Environment

Water quality testing is an important part of environmental monitoring. When water quality is poor, it affects not only aquatic life but the surrounding ecosystem as well.

These sections detail all of the parameters that affect the quality of water in the environment. These properties can be physical, chemical or biological factors. Physical properties of water quality include

temperature and turbidity. Chemical characteristics involve parameters such as pH and dissolved oxygen. Biological indicators of water quality include algae and phytoplankton. These parameters are relevant not only to surface water studies of the ocean, lakes and rivers, but to groundwater and industrial processes as well.

Water quality monitoring can help researchers predict and learn from natural processes in the environment and determine human impacts on an ecosystem. These measurement efforts can also assist in restoration projects or ensure environmental standards are being met.

Water Quality|Types

• Algae, Phytoplankton and Chlorophyll
• CDOM
• Conductivity, Salinity and Total Dissolved Solids
• Dissolved Oxygen
• Nutrients: Phosphorus and Nitrogen as Nitrate and Ammonia
• pH
• Solar Radiation & Photosynthetically Active Radiation
• Turbidity, Total Suspended Solids and Clarity
• Water Temperature

Water Facts

• Our rivers, 
• Reservoirs, 
• Lakes, and 
• Seas are drowning in Chemicals, Waste, Plastic, and other Pollutants.

British poet W. H. Auden once noted, “Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” Yet while we all know water is crucial for life, we trash it anyway. Some 80 percent of the world’s wastewater is dumped—largely untreated—back into the environment, polluting rivers, lakes, and oceans.

This widespread problem of water pollution is jeopardizing our health. Unsafe water kills more people each year than war and all other forms of violence combined. Meanwhile, our drinkable water sources are finite: Less than 1 percent of the earth’s freshwater is actually accessible to us. Without action, the challenges will only increase by 2050, when global demand for freshwater is expected to be one-third greater than it is now.

Still, we’re not hopeless against the threat to clean water. To better understand the problem and what we can do about it, here’s an overview of what water pollution is, what causes it, and how we can protect ourselves.

Effects of Quality Water

• Groundwater

When rain falls and seeps deep into the earth, filling the cracks, crevices, and porous spaces of an aquifer (basically an underground storehouse of water), it becomes groundwater—one of our least visible but most important natural resources. Nearly 40 percent of Americans rely on groundwater, pumped to the earth’s surface, for drinking water. For some folks in rural areas, it’s their only freshwater source. Groundwater gets polluted when contaminants—from pesticides and fertilizers to waste leached from landfills and septic systems—make their way into an aquifer, rendering it unsafe for human use. Ridding groundwater of contaminants can be difficult to impossible, as well as costly. Once polluted, an aquifer may be unusable for decades, or even thousands of years. Groundwater can also spread contamination far from the original polluting source as it seeps into streams, lakes, and oceans.

• Surface water

Covering about 70 percent of the earth, surface water is what fills our oceans, lakes, rivers, and all those other blue bits on the world map. Surface water from freshwater sources (that is, from sources other than the ocean) accounts for more than 60 percent of the water delivered to American homes. But a significant pool of that water is in peril. According to the most recent surveys on national water quality from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, nearly half of our rivers and streams and more than one-third of our lakes are polluted and unfit for swimming, fishing, and drinking. Nutrient pollution, which includes nitrates and phosphates, is the leading type of contamination in these freshwater sources. While plants and animals need these nutrients to grow, they have become a major pollutant due to farm waste and fertilizer runoff. Municipal and industrial waste discharges contribute their fair share of toxins as well. There’s also all the random junk that industry and individuals dump directly into waterways.

• Ocean water

Eighty percent of ocean pollution (also called marine pollution) originates on land—whether along the coast or far inland. Contaminants such as chemicals, nutrients, and heavy metals are carried from farms, factories, and cities by streams and rivers into our bays and estuaries; from there they travel out to sea. Meanwhile, marine debris—particularly plastic—is blown in by the wind or washed in via storm drains and sewers. Our seas are also sometimes spoiled by oil spills and leaks—big and small—and are consistently soaking up carbon pollution from the air. The ocean absorbs as much as a quarter of man-made carbon emissions.

• Point source

When contamination originates from a single source, it’s called point source pollution. Examples include wastewater (also called effluent) discharged legally or illegally by a manufacturer, oil refinery, or wastewater treatment facility, as well as contamination from leaking septic systems, chemical and oil spills, and illegal dumping. The EPA regulates point source pollution by establishing limits on what can be discharged by a facility directly into a body of water. While point source pollution originates from a specific place, it can affect miles of waterways and ocean.

• Nonpoint source

Nonpoint source pollution is contamination derived from diffuse sources. These may include agricultural or stormwater runoff or debris blown into waterways from land. Nonpoint source pollution is the leading cause of water pollution in U.S. waters, but it’s difficult to regulate, since there’s no single, identifiable culprit.

• Transboundary

It goes without saying that water pollution can’t be contained by a line on a map. Transboundary pollution is the result of contaminated water from one country spilling into the waters of another. Contamination can result from a disaster—like an oil spill—or the slow, downriver creep of industrial, agricultural, or municipal discharge.

• Natural processes affecting water quality 

Although degradation of water quality is almost invariably the result of human activities, certain natural phenomena can result in water quality falling below that required for particular purposes. Natural events such as torrential rainfall and hurricanes lead to excessive erosion and landslides, which in turn increase the content of suspended material in affected rivers and lakes. Seasonal overturn of the water in some lakes can bring water with little or no dissolved oxygen to the surface. Such natural events may be frequent or occasional. Permanent natural conditions in some areas may make water unfit for drinking or for specific uses, such as irrigation. Common examples of this are the salinisation of surface waters through evaporation in arid and semi-arid regions and the high salt content of some groundwaters under certain geological conditions. Many groundwaters are naturally high in carbonates (hardness), thus necessitating their treatment before use for certain industrial applications. Groundwaters in some regions contain specific ions (such as fluoride) and toxic elements (such as arsenic and selenium) in quantities that are harmful to health, while others contain elements or compounds that cause other types of problems (such as the staining of sanitary fixtures by iron and manganese). The nature and concentration of chemical elements and compounds in a freshwater system are subject to change by various types of natural process, i.e. physical, chemical, hydrological and biological. 

• Water Quality Deterioration

 Historically, the development of civilisations has led to a shift in the pattern of water use from rural/agricultural to urban/industrial, generally according to the following sequence: drinking and personal hygiene, fisheries, navigation and transport, livestock watering and agricultural irrigation, hydroelectric power, industrial production (e.g. pulp and paper, food processing), industrial cooling water (e.g. fossil fuel and nuclear power plants), recreational activities and wildlife conservation. Fortunately, the water uses with the highest demands for quantity often have the lowest demands for quality. Drinking water, by contrast, requires the highest quality water but in relatively small quantities. Increasing industrialisation and the growth of large urban centres have been accompanied by increases in the pollution stress on the aquatic environment. Since ancient times, water in rivers, lakes and oceans has also been considered as a convenient receiver of wastes. This use (or abuse) conflicts with almost all other uses of water and most seriously with the use of freshwater for drinking, personal hygiene and food processing. 

• Water and Human Health

 Water, although an absolute necessity for life, can be a carrier of many diseases. Paradoxically, the ready availability of water makes possible the personal hygiene measures that are essential to prevent the transmission of enteric diseases. Infectious water-related diseases can be categorised as waterborne, water-hygiene, water-contact and water-habitat vector diseases. Some water-related diseases, however, may fall into more than one category. 

Source literature and further reading

Water Research Drinking