Water pollution

  Every other week we read of a new water pollution scandal, often after people fall sick, but sometimes because of large-scale fish die off or other adverse environmental impacts. Can we turn the tide of growing water pollution around?  Faecal coliform sample grown from water drawn from the Ganges at Varanasi. Neil Palmer/ IWMI Human sources of water degradation include household and industrial waste, agricultural chemicals, and livestock waste, which all end up in water bodies and cause pollution if untreated or not managed appropriately.  As a result of insufficient action or plain inaction, today, approximately 1 in 8 or 650 million people live in areas where water quality risks are high due to elevated levels of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and 1/6 th  and 1/4 th  of the world’s population lives in river basins where water quality risks are high due to excessive nitrogen and phosphorous loadings. Levels of agricultural and domestic BOD, nitrogen and phosphorous are elevated or