Wastewater—Sources, Toxicity, and Their Consequences to Human Health Publisher



Karri RR¹ ; Ravindran G² ; Dehghani MH^{3, 4}
Source: Soft Computing Techniques in Solid Waste and Wastewater Management Published:2021

Abstract

Humans, for their development, utilize the natural wealth rapidly; among the resources they consume, water is being used drastically due to uncontrolled and unsustainable consumption. Also, it is very evident that the development of the society relies heavily on technological advancements, but it should not happen by the depletion of the resources, potable water is scantily available, and protecting it is the need of the hour. Due to industrialization and household consumption owing to urbanization, a huge amount of wastewater is being generated across the globe. Nevertheless, this unsustainable growth ended up in releasing of toxic chemicals into the air, water, and land and thus contaminated them to an unprecedented scale. Water pollution is a global environmental concern, and the concentration of toxic pollutants in the water bodies is found to be well above the designated limits established by the World Health Organization and the Environmental Protection Agency in many countries. Among the pollutants released into water bodies, several were found to be causing serious issues to the human health, and analyzing the release mechanism, degradation process, implementing their removal process before discharging into natural water bodies are needed. In this work, authors had made an attempt to analyze the sources of wastewater that arises due to anthropogenic activities and also we reviewed the toxicity of those pollutants focusing on the serious consequences it may cause to human health. © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.