NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
Sludge Part 1. A. Municipal sewage facilities main task is to purify polluted water from great many sources, like homes, businesses and public drains. In order to do that, they filter out the dirty water and than they discharge it, once its purified.
The material remaining after the process is collected, it is usually referred to as sludge. The different characteristics of sludge determine the best ways that need to be applied to get rid of it. Sludge can be used as fertilizer in right amounts; it can also be land filled or incinerated. There are three factors that determine sludges quality whether it comes from residential homes, industries or business facilities, what technical processes are used to treat polluted water and those seasonal changes of wastewater composition. When it comes to deciding what is the best way to get rid of sludge, its both chemical and physical characteristics must be taken into account. Sludge usually consists of 1 - 8 % of solid material.
Their pH value ranges from 4 to 12. The pH factor affects the movement of heavy metals and also survival of bacteria that cause diseases. This factor is the most important in sorting sludge. Many of these harmful elements can be kept out from leaching into the ground by eliminating them in the wastewater.
Yet we can never filter out the polluted water completely, and there is always going to be a problem of disposing sludge. Up until recently, it was thought that sludge can be effectively disposed if added to soil in certain amounts as fertilizers, but it appears now that such approach might not be effective, after all. There is only so much fertilizers can be added to a soil, otherwise itll lead to its poisoning. Environmental issues are heavily affected by current political trends and thats why recycling idea got so much strength, in recent years it also being applied to dealing with problem of sludge disposal. Yet it appears quite unrealistic, from the logical point of view, that people can effectively recycle the toxic products of its own existence.
So now were witnessing environmental thought returning to the old idea that sludge cannot be effectively recycled land filling and dumping it in the water seems to be only the effective method of disposing sludge. B. In 2002, many elderly residents of south part of Surrey (B. C. Canada) felt that their health started to deteriorate with an alarming speed. There was no logical explanation for that until its been proven that their health problems were nothing but a result of sludge recycling policies, employed by the municipal government at the time.
Apparently, these peoples houses were in an immediate proximity from cornflower fields that were being fertilized with sludge-based compound. It goes to show that sludge recycling approach might need to be reconsidered. It is now estimated that about 100. 000 harmful elements of organic and non-organic nature are present in substance to what we refer as sludge. There are also deadly chemicals, known as organochlorine estrogen mimickers such as DDT. Before we try to go all way about trying to recycle sludge, we need to ask ourselves whether this recycling obsession has chances to become another utopia. Sludge is nothing but huge constituents of harmful material that pose an immediate threat to life.
We certainly dont even think of being able to recycle nuclear waste. Yet sludge, in many cases, appears to have just the same radioactive properties. Modern utopias from environmentalism still try to convince us that the humankind is self efficient and can just exist among its own waste by the means of consuming it. Fairy tales dont work when it comes to applying its principals to peoples everyday lives. Part 2. Before human civilization became to be associated with huge industrial cities, the waste disposal problem used to be solved in very natural way, which also was very beneficial to the environment.
Feces used to be widely dispersed on the ground or buried, but in both way it was insured that the decomposing organisms were able to find an easy access to it, disposing waste and enriching soil at the same time. That, in its turn, would also result in diversification of life forms. In a way, we can say that recycling as a process, used to be an effective tool to insure the effective disposal of waste, before people came with a definition of what it is all about and tried to applied its principals in an overpopulated urban environments. It is a fact that our modern societies are based on normal functioning of agriculture that provides us with nutrients. If we look back in history, it appears that agriculture used to be associated with culture right up to relatively modern times. Yet, it is a fact that within different cultures people were having different excretory practices.
We can clearly divide cultures on those that praised using natural fertilizers and those that had a different approach never having thought of fertilizers as something very crucial to provide normal growth of fruits and vegetables. The cultures that practiced using manure at extensive rate were primary Asian. In republic of Kazakhstan it is a common practice to have human droppings lying around peoples houses it comes as something very natural. European societies were known for their ambivalent attitude towards disposing of their own excreta. It is still a subject of debates, whether sludge is to represent an ultimate substance to get rid of or a fertilizer.
Before the advent of piped water, a human excreta was deposited in cesspools or vault in the backyards of European towns. Than at night, it was collected by scavengers and dropped in a river or into a land dumps. But there was no real value attached to it in peoples perception, unlike among Asians. There is another aspect of a problem cultural. A lot depends on peoples attitude toward corresponding matter. It wouldnt be too daring to suggest that people with different ethical backgrounds have developed a different attitude towards how sludge is best to be disposed of.
Modern North-American cities, where this problem has grown to a degree when some immediate drastic measures needs to be applied, have become a melting pot for many cultures, so its hard to find a solution that please all. The sludge is being dumped in landfills and incinerated. Very often, the first way of handling the problem causes in having toxic elements leaching into the ground. The other way often leads to polluting the air. So far, the best proved to be dumping the sludge into the water. But only the cities, located on the ocean shores can afford it.
Dumping waste in rivers is a very ineffective method of dealing with it. In my opinion, a combined approach towards solving this problem might prove to be only effective one. Immigration, cultural, ethno-graphical factors need to be taken into consideration. Since we most likely to deal with fact of rapid population growth in North-American cities, a proper demographic policies need to be applied. We need to try hard to prevent accumulating ever more population in big urban centers before having upgraded its sewage facilities. This, in its turn, will require a huge increase of taxes rate, as maintaining sewage system comes only a second to US highways building projects, that are also are being paid with tax-payers money.
But again, our society is much to secularized to be able to make certain sacrifices, in order to attain a common goal. It appears that solving the problem of sludge disposal depends on far more factors than just technical ones. What also plays a big role in reducing the produced waste is raising the environmental conscience among people. But, in my opinion, it cant be exclusively based on just promoting the cause and encouraging people to just keep their environments clean on voluntary basis.
As it was noted before, different cultures have different standards of what is clean and what is not. The standards of cleanliness need to be enforced by law, which would inflict heavy penalties on those who breach such laws. Above mentioned measures need to be applied in combined manner, if we to accomplish any results. Bibliography: 1. Civilization & Sludge: Notes on the History of the Management of Human Excreta Abby A. Rockefeller web 16. 09. 04 Sludge is Sludge is Sludge: The Illusion of Safety.
Abby Rockefeller web 17. 09. 04 The Sludge Scam: Should Sewage Sludge Fertilize Your Vegetables Laura Orlando web 17. 09. 04 What is Environmental Sustainability in Sanitation? Robert Goodland 1 and Abby Rockefeller 2 web 17. 09. 04 Environmentalism. Wikipedia. web 16. 09. 04 This short list of what sludge "may include" is shorthand for the enormous list of constituents that can actually be present in it.
For instance, of the 100, 000 or so organic and inorganic chemicals produced and used in industrialized nations, a huge number will end up in the sewers. One thousand new ones are produced every year and are added to the cocktail of synthetic substances affecting life processes. Those pollutants that are put in the sewers -- and that are removed from the wastewater by the treatment process -- will end up in the sludge. There are the heavy metals which, though they are micro-nutrients crucially needed in tiny amounts for growth of life, are toxic to life when they cross the threshold firmly established in the cells of life. There are organochlorine estrogen mimickers, the best known of which are DDT, chlordane, alpha-hexachlorocyclohexane, 2, 4, D, PCBs, and dioxin. There are halogenated aliphatic (chain) hydrocarbons, aromatic (ring) hydrocarbons, chloro- and nitro-aromatic hydrocarbons, phthalates, halogenated ethers, and phenols.
There is radioactive matter from hospitals. All of these are destructive of life processes (Reutergardh 1966). Attitudes toward sludge -- this heterogeneous product of wastewater treatment processes -- and toward the disposition of it have a convoluted history of their own. Clearly, sludge contains constituents that are hazardous to life. If we persist in producing sludge, something must be done with it. What to do with it is the subject of intense debate.
To understand this debate, one must know something of the interplay between the following forces: the environmental movement that began in the early 1970 s; the organic food movement that began decades earlier; the traditional sanitary engineering / regulatory posture; and the exigencies of the prevailing economic / industrial arrangement. The character of the debate taking place in the United States is illustrative of the way these forces interact regarding the technical and management patterns in all the seemed, and about-to-be-seemed, parts of the world.
Free research essays on topics related to: waste, sludge, american cities, north american, heavy metals
Research essay sample on Heavy Metals American Cities
