View previous stories
	Unsafe water, the silent killer by IRIN News UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) South Africa   22 March 2010   Every 20 seconds a child dies from a water-related disease - 1.8 million children younger than five years each year. This alarming figure is from a new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which says millions of tonnes of solid waste are being flushed into water systems every day, spreading disease.   "More than two billion tonnes of wastewater are being flushed into our fresh water and oceans every day, every year," Christian Nelleman, the lead author of the report, Sick Water?, told IRIN.   The wastewater, a cocktail of agricultural and industrial runoffs and sewage, was seeping into groundwater and polluting drinking sources, like wells, in low-lying areas where the bulk of the world''s population live.   Countries should not only invest in infrastructure to manage wastewater but also in ecosystems, for instance by replanting mangroves, which acted as natural filters in coastal areas, said Nelleman.   "What is also very alarming is the amount of phosphate and nitrogen that is lost as agricultural refuse - projections show that we can run out of phosphate very soon," he warned.   Nearly half the agricultural phosphate applied each season got washed away and ended up in rivers and oceans, where it contributed to triggering algae blooms that could damage ecosystems and fish stocks, Nelleman said. Wastewater treatment plants should be sophisticated enough to harvest the phosphates.   The report urged countries to draw up national and local strategies to cope with the wastewater production and invest in infrastructure to manage it.   Some facts from the report:   Around 90 percent of diarrhoea cases, which kill some 2.2 million people every year, are caused by unsafe drinking water and poor hygiene.   Over 50 percent of malnutrition cases globally are associated with diarrhoea or intestinal worm infections.   Over half the world''s hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from illnesses linked to contaminated water.   Almost 900 million people lack access to safe drinking water, and an estimated 2.6 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. South Asia (around 221 million) and sub-Saharan Africa (330 million) have the highest proportion of people living without basic sanitation.   Ninety percent of the wastewater discharged daily in developing countries is untreated. Eighty percent of all marine pollution originates on land – most of it wastewater - damaging coral reefs and fishing grounds.   People in developed countries generate five times more wastewater per person than those in developing countries, but treat over 90 percent of their wastewater, compared to only a few percent in developing countries.   Agriculture accounts for 70 to 90 percent of all water consumed, mainly for irrigation, but large amounts return to rivers as run-off; nearly half of all organic matter in wastewater comes from agriculture.   Industrial wastes, pesticides from agriculture, and tailings from mining also create serious health risks and threats to water resources, costing billions of dollars to monitor, much more to clean.   Use of bottled water is increasing, but it takes three litres of water to produce one litre of bottled water. In the USA alone an additional 17 million barrels of oil per year are used to make the plastic containers. Worldwide, 200 billion litres of bottled water are produced every year, creating an enormous problem of how to dispose of the used plastic bottles.   Wastewater generates methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2). It also generates nitrous oxide, which is 310 times more powerful than CO2.   It is estimated that in just a decade, wastewater-linked emissions of methane will rise by 25 percent and that of nitrous oxide by 50 percent. Increased flooding as a result of climate change can overwhelm ageing sewage infrastructure in cities and towns. Visit the related web page
	The Pacific Ocean the biggest waste dump in the World by Ed Cumming The Telegraph   March 16, 2010   As large as the USA, the great pacific waste dump keeps getting bigger, and may very well be poisoning us all.   The world’s biggest rubbish dump keeps growing. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch – or the Pacific Trash Vortex – is a floating monument to our culture of waste, the final resting place of every forgotten carrier bag, every discarded bottle and every piece of packaging blown away in the wind.   Dr Simon Boxall, a physical oceanographer at the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, says: “It’s the size of North America. But although the patch itself is extremely large, it’s only one very clear representation of the much bigger worldwide problem.”   Plastic is the main issue. Fifty years ago, most flotsam was biodegradable. Now it is 90 per cent plastic. In 2006, the United Nations Environment Programme estimated that there were 46,000 pieces of floating plastic in every square mile of ocean. With its stubborn refusal to biodegrade, all plastic not buried in landfills – roughly half of it – sweeps into streams and sewers and then out into rivers and, finally, the ocean.   Some of it – some say as much as 70 per cent – sinks to the ocean floor. The remainder floats, usually within 20 metres of the surface, and is carried into stable circular currents, or gyres “like ocean ring-roads”, says Dr Boxall.   Once inside these gyres, the plastic is drawn by wind and surface currents towards the centre, where it steadily accumulates. The world’s major oceans all have these gyres, and all are gathering rubbish. Although the North Pacific – bordering California, Japan and China – is the biggest, there are also increasingly prominent gyres in the South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. Our problems with plastics are only just beginning.   Dr Boxall says: “People imagine it as a kind of football pitch of rubbish you can go and walk on – it’s not like that.” As most of the plastic has been broken down into tiny particles, floating beneath the surface, it is impossible to photograph from aircraft or satellites, or even really to see until you are right in its centre.   As a result, it is difficult to convey the grave danger this 100 million tons or so of rubbish – and counting – presents. Some might be tempted to argue that the rubbish has to end up somewhere, and that the ocean is no worse than landfill.   Herein lies the main danger: plastic does not biodegrade, but when exposed to sunlight it photo-degrades, breaking down into smaller and smaller particles, and finally to “nurdles”, the industry name for the tiny grains that are the building blocks of most modern plastics. These tiny particles are not harmful on their own, but they are very absorbent, and soak up waterborne toxins, such as pesticides and cooling agents. These nurdles, now saturated in poisons, are eaten by filter-feeders at the very bottom of the food chain, and then make their way up it.   The scale of the toxin problem is unknown. Although plastics have now been around for a century, their use has only been really widespread for 50 years. Also, the threat is not only from food – marine extracts are used in countless other products too: particularly cosmetics. Since there are so many possible routes for toxins from these plastics to enter our food chain, there has yet to be an in-depth scientific study of their possible effect on humans.   But these particles are certainly killing marine life: the UN estimates that more than one million birds and 100,000 mammals die every year from plastics – by poisoning, entanglement and choking. There are also studies under way investigating the possible connection between a rise in fertility problems and cancers, and the proliferation of plastic in the ocean.   The solution is equally confounding – there is just so much junk. Most experts agree that the real change needs to come above ground, from people taking more responsibility for their dumping.   The four worst-offending plastics are carrier bags, bottle-tops, bottles and styrofoam.There are some – led by the renowned American environmentalist and National Geographic Explorer-at-large Sylvia Earle– who think that we should simply try not to use plastics at all. Others would like the US government to embark on an operation to clean the ocean manually, using tankers to retrieve the plastic, which could then be used as fuel.   Dr Boxall is decidedly less optimistic: “There is nothing we can do,” he says. “It’s too big. It’s here to stay. It’s like nuclear waste. Even an oil spillage, disastrous as it is, eventually breaks down. Plastic doesn’t. We’ve simply got to become better about how we dispose of waste.”
	View more stories