The human population is ever growing. Hand in hand with this growing population new human settlements have come up and industries have been set up to fulfill the basic needs.
New means of agriculture is adopted by using fertilizers am pesticides to increase the productivity. All these and much more are practiced for comfortable living. In the bargain, wastes from domestic and industrial activities are dumped into the environment.
Consequently, environmental pollution has reached an alarming level and the environment has suffered an irreparable damage. Solid, liquid and gas wastes from the industries; run off fertilizers and pesticides from the agricultural land; am domestic sewage from urban areas has reached a limit beyond disposal.
The problem has been compounded by oil sleeks from crude petroleum tankers. Most causes of this pollution are deliberate. Stringent pollution control legislations are enforced in developed countries Pollution is being monitored and minimized by employing modern techniques. However in developing countries, modern and effective waste treatment facilities are lacking poor financial situations.
Conventional waste treatment practices like cesspits, septic tanks, sewage farms, gravel beds, percolating filters and activated sludge processes with anaerobic digestion have been in use in these countries from time immemorial these are less effective and sometimes nonproductive.
The over dependence on the conventional waste treatment facilities is exemplified by the transient break down of, facility in Zermatt, Switzerland. Typhoid broke out following the breakdown of this facility
The serious dimensions of environmental pollution are exemplified by severs landmark episodes. The oil tanker, Amoco Cadiz leaked 67 million gallons of crude petroleum into the sea in 1978. A US Air Force fuel storage facility leaked in Charleston, South Carolina in 1975. By 1985, the contamination had spread to residential areas.
The giant oil tanker, Exxon...