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Diseases caused by pollution, lead to the chronic illness and deaths of about 8.4 million people each year. However, pollution receives a fraction of the interest from the global community. [ 1 ] This is in part because pollution causes so many diseases that it is often difficult to draw a straight line between cause and effect.
Waterborne diseases are conditions (meaning adverse effects on human health, such as death, disability, illness or disorders) [1]: 47 caused by pathogenic micro-organisms that are transmitted by water. These diseases can be spread while bathing, washing, drinking water, or by eating food exposed to contaminated water. [2]
Water that is intended for drinking should go through some treatment to reduce pathogenic viral and bacterial concentrations. As the density of the human population has increased the incidence of sewage contamination of water has increased as well, thus the risk to humans from pathogenic viruses will increase if precautions are not taken. [3]
Wastewater-based epidemiology (or wastewater-based surveillance or sewage chemical-information mining) analyzes wastewater to determine the consumption of, or exposure to, chemicals or pathogens in a population. This is achieved by measuring chemical or biomarkers in wastewater generated by the people contributing to a sewage treatment plant ...
Wastewater (or waste water) is water generated after the use of freshwater, raw water, drinking water or saline water in a variety of deliberate applications or processes. [1]: 1 Another definition of wastewater is "Used water from any combination of domestic, industrial, commercial or agricultural activities, surface runoff / storm water, and any sewer inflow or sewer infiltration".
At the POTW, harmful pollutants in domestic sewage, called conventional pollutants, are removed from the sewage and then the treated effluent is discharged into a surface water body. [38] The removed solids constitute sewage sludge, which typically receive further treatment prior to final disposal on land. (See Sewage sludge treatment.) POTWs ...
Power failure, human error, or mechanical failure may cause similar discharge of untreated or partially treated sewage from a sewage treatment plant; but this is typically regarded as a sewage treatment plant malfunction rather than a sanitary sewer overflow. Sewage treatment plants may be designed to capture overflow from malfunctioning units ...
A human pathogen is a pathogen (microbe or microorganism such as a virus, bacterium, prion, or fungus) that causes disease in humans. The human physiological defense against common pathogens (such as Pneumocystis ) is mainly the responsibility of the immune system with help by some of the body's normal microbiota .