Causes, effects and remedy of Air pollution in Dhaka mega city

The term 'megacity' refers to metropolitan areas with a total population of more than 10 million
people. Tokyo (Japan) is currently the largest 'megacity' in the world with 37.4 million
inhabitants. In 2100 it will be Lagos (Nigeria) with 88 million. Dhaka is going to be the sixth
largest mega city in 2030 adding at least 10 million more people, an ICDDR,B population
scientist says. As of 2018, Shanghai with 24.1 million people is the world's most populous city,
followed by Beijing (18.5 million), Karachi (18 million) and Istanbul (14.6
million). Dhaka ranks number 5 with 14.5 million. Mumbai completes the list with 10.4 million
people as the number 10 mega city.

Air pollution can be defined as an alteration of air quality that can be characterized by measurements
of chemical, biological or physical pollutants in the air. Therefore, air pollution means the undesirable
presence of impurities or the abnormal rise in the proportion of some constituents of the atmosphere. It
can be classified in 2 sections: visible and invisible air pollution.

Local
this concerns the quality of ambient air within a radius of a few kilometers
Regional
pollution like acid rain, photochemical reactions and degradation of water quality at distances of a few
kilometers to a thousand kilometers
Global
depletion of the ozone layer and global warming caused by the emission of greenhouse gases, mainly
carbon dioxide (CO2)
What is Air Pollution?
Air pollution refers to any physical, chemical or biological change in the air. It is the
contamination of air by harmful gases, dust and smoke which affects plants, animals and humans
drastically.
There is a certain percentage of gases present in the atmosphere. An increase or decrease in the
composition of these gases is harmful to survival. This imbalance in the gaseous composition has
resulted in an increase in earth’s temperature, which is known as global warming.

Types of Air Pollutants

There are two types of air pollutants:

Primary Pollutants
The pollutants that directly cause air pollution are known as primary pollutants. Sulphur-dioxide
emitted from factories is a primary pollutant.

Secondary Pollutants
The pollutants formed by the intermingling and reaction of primary pollutants are known as
secondary pollutants. Smog, formed by the intermingling of smoke and fog, is a secondary
pollutant.
Also Read: Water Pollution

Causes of Air Pollution

Following are the important causes of air pollution:

Burning of Fossil Fuels

The combustion of fossil fuels emits a large amount of sulphur dioxide. Carbon monoxide
released by incomplete combustion of fossil fuels also results in air pollution.

Automobiles
The gases emitted from vehicles such as jeeps, trucks, cars, buses, etc. pollute the environment.
These are the major sources of greenhouse gases and also result in diseases among individuals.

Agricultural Activities
Ammonia is one of the most hazardous gases emitted during agricultural activities. The
insecticides, pesticides and fertilizers emit harmful chemicals in the atmosphere and contaminate
it.
Factories and Industries
Factories and industries are the main source of carbon monoxide, organic compounds,
hydrocarbons and chemicals. These are released into the air, degrading its quality.

Mining Activities
In the mining process, the minerals below the earth are extracted using large pieces of
equipment. The dust and chemicals released during the process not only pollute the air, but also
deteriorate the health of the workers and people living in the nearby areas.

Domestic Sources
The household cleaning products and paints contain toxic chemicals that are released in the air.
The smell from the newly painted walls is the smell of the chemicals present in the paints. It not
only pollutes the air but also affects breathing.
Also Read: Ozone Layer Depletion

Effects of Air Pollution

The hazardous effects of air pollution on the environment include:

Diseases
Air pollution has resulted in several respiratory disorders and heart diseases among humans. The
cases of lung cancer have increased in the last few decades. Children living near polluted areas
are more prone to pneumonia and asthma. Many people die every year due to the direct or
indirect effects of air pollution.

Global Warming
Due to the emission of greenhouse gases, there is an imbalance in the gaseous composition of the
air. This has led to an increase in the temperature of the earth. This increase in earth’s
temperature is known as global warming. This has resulted in the melting of glaciers and an
increase in sea levels. Many areas are submerged underwater.

Acid Rain
The burning of fossil fuels releases harmful gases such as nitrogen oxides and sulphur oxides in
the air. The water droplets combine with these pollutants, become acidic and fall as acid rain
which damages human, animal and plant life.

Ozone Layer Depletion

The release of chlorofluorocarbons, halons, and hydro chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere is
the major cause of depletion of the ozone layer. The depleting ozone layer does not prevent the
harmful ultraviolet rays coming from the sun and causes skin diseases and eye problems among
individuals.
Effect on Animals
The air pollutants suspend on the water bodies and affect the aquatic life. Pollution also compels
the animals to leave their habitat and shift to a new place. This renders them stray and has also
led to the extinction of a large number of animal species.

Air Pollution Control

Following are the measures one should adopt, to control air pollution:

Avoid Using Vehicles

People should avoid using vehicles for shorter distances. Rather, they should prefer public modes
of transport to travel from one place to another. This not only prevents pollution, but also
conserves energy.

Energy Conservation
A large number of fossil fuels are burnt to generate electricity. Therefore, do not forget to switch
off the electrical appliances when not in use. Thus, you can save the environment at the
individual level. Use of energy-efficient devices such CFLs also controls pollution to a greater
level.

Use of Clean Energy Resources

The use of solar, wind and geothermal energies reduce air pollution at a larger level. Various
countries, including India, have implemented the use of these resources as a step towards a
cleaner environment.
Other air pollution control measures include:

1. By minimizing and reducing the use of fire and fire products.

2. Since industrial emissions are one of the major causes of air pollution, the pollutants can
be controlled or treated at the source itself to reduce its effects. For example, if the
reactions of a certain raw material yield a pollutant, then the raw materials can be
substituted with other less polluting materials.
3. Fuel substitution is another way of controlling air pollution. In many parts of India, petrol
and diesel are being replaced by CNG – Compressed Natural Gas fueled vehicles. These
are mostly adopted by vehicles that aren’t fully operating with ideal emission engines.
4. Although there are many practices in India, which focus on repairing the quality of air,
most of them are either forgotten or not being enforced properly. There are still a lot of
vehicles on roads which haven’t been tested for vehicle emissions.
5. Another way of controlling air pollution caused by industries is to modify and maintain
existing pieces of equipment so that the emission of pollutants is minimized.
6. Sometimes controlling pollutants at the source is not possible. In that case, we can have
process control equipment to control the pollution.
7. A very effective way of controlling air pollution is by diluting the air pollutants.
8. The last and the best way of reducing the ill effects of air pollution is tree plantation.
Plants and trees reduce a large number of pollutants in the air. Ideally, planting trees in
areas of high pollution levels will be extremely effective.
Water pollution:

Bangladesh is considered the world's most densely populated country with 2,639 people per
square mile. Dhaka, the capital, is one of Asia's fastest growing cities, with a population
currently around 15 million. With some 400,000 new residents arriving each year from rural
areas seeking a better life, Dhaka is straining under the pressure of its rapidly swelling
population. Already, this megacity faces rising real estate prices, exponentially growing slums,
poor quality housing, unreal traffic jams, nagging electrical blackouts, stifling air pollution, poor
governance, inadequate clean water supply, and poor sanitation. If population estimates hold
true, Dhaka is expected to grow to 20 million by 2020, making it the world's third largest city.

Sources Of Water Pollution

The key causatives of water pollution in Dhaka city are:

 Urbanization.
 Deforestation.
  Industrial effluents.
 Social and Religious Practices.
 Use of Detergents and Fertilizers.
 Agricultural run-offs- Use of insecticides and pesticides.

Water Pollution – A Modern Epidemic

ne of the primary causes of water pollution is the contamination of water bodies by toxic
chemicals. As seen in the example mentioned above, the dumped plastic bottles, tins, water cans
and other wastes pollute the water bodies. These result in water pollution, which harms not just
humans, but the whole ecosystem. Toxins drained from these pollutants, travel up to the food
chain and eventually affect humans. In most cases, the outcome is destructive to only local
population and species, but it can have an impact on a global scale too.
Nearly 6 billion kilograms of garbage is dumped every year in the oceans. Apart from industrial
effluents and untreated sewage, other forms of unwanted materials are dumped into various
water bodies. These can range from nuclear waste to oil spills – the latter of which can render
vast areas uninhabitable.

Effects Of Water Pollution

The effect of water pollution depends upon the type of pollutants and its concentration. Also, the
location of water bodies is an important factor to determine the levels of pollution.

 Water bodies in the vicinity of urban areas are extremely polluted. This is the result of
dumping garbage and toxic chemicals by industrial and commercial establishments.
 Water pollution drastically affects aquatic life. It affects their metabolism, behaviour,
causes illness and eventual death. Dioxin is a chemical that causes a lot of problems from
reproduction to uncontrolled cell growth or cancer. This chemical is bioaccumulated in
fish, chicken and meat. Chemicals such as this travel up the food chain before entering
the human body.
 The effect of water pollution can have a huge impact on the food chain. It disrupts the
food-chain. Cadmium and lead are some toxic substances, these pollutants upon entering
the food chain through animals (fish when consumed by animals, humans) can continue
to disrupt at higher levels.
  Humans are affected by pollution and can contract diseases such as hepatitis through
faecal matter in water sources. Poor drinking water treatment and unfit water can always
cause an outbreak of infectious diseases such as cholera, etc.
 The ecosystem can be critically affected, modified and destructured because of water
pollution.

What Are the Causes of Water Pollution?

Water is uniquely vulnerable to pollution. Known as a “universal solvent,” water is able to
dissolve more substances than any other liquid on earth. It’s the reason we have Kool-Aid and
brilliant blue waterfalls. It’s also why water is so easily polluted. Toxic substances from farms,
towns, and factories readily dissolve into and mix with it, causing water pollution.
Categories of Water Pollution

Groundwater
When rain falls and seeps deep into the earth, filling the cracks, crevices, and porous spaces of an
aquifer (basically an underground storehouse of water), it becomes groundwater—one of our
least visible but most important natural resources. Nearly 40 percent of Americans rely on
groundwater, pumped to the earth’s surface, for drinking water. For some folks in rural areas, it’s
their only freshwater source. Groundwater gets polluted when contaminants—from pesticides
and fertilizers to waste leached from landfills and septic systems—make their way into an
aquifer, rendering it unsafe for human use. Ridding groundwater of contaminants can be difficult
to impossible, as well as costly. Once polluted, an aquifer may be unusable for decades, or even
thousands of years. Groundwater can also spread contamination far from the original polluting
source as it seeps into streams, lakes, and oceans.

Surface water
Covering about 70 percent of the earth, surface water is what fills our oceans, lakes, rivers, and
all those other blue bits on the world map. Surface water from freshwater sources (that is, from
sources other than the ocean) accounts for more than 60 percent of the water delivered to
American homes. But a significant pool of that water is in peril. According to the most recent
surveys on national water quality from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, nearly half of
our rivers and streams and more than one-third of our lakes are polluted and unfit for swimming,
fishing, and drinking. Nutrient pollution, which includes nitrates and phosphates, is the leading
type of contamination in these freshwater sources. While plants and animals need these nutrients
to grow, they have become a major pollutant due to farm waste and fertilizer runoff. Municipal
and industrial waste discharges contribute their fair share of toxins as well. There’s also all the
random junk that industry and individuals dump directly into waterways.

Ocean water
Eighty percent of ocean pollution (also called marine pollution) originates on land—whether
along the coast or far inland. Contaminants such as chemicals, nutrients, and heavy metals are
carried from farms, factories, and cities by streams and rivers into our bays and estuaries; from
there they travel out to sea. Meanwhile, marine debris—particularly plastic—is blown in by the
wind or washed in via storm drains and sewers. Our seas are also sometimes spoiled by oil spills
and leaks—big and small—and are consistently soaking up carbon pollution from the air. The
ocean absorbs as much as a quarter of man-made carbon emissions.
The Most Common Types of Water Contamination

Agricultural
Not only is the agricultural sector the biggest consumer of global freshwater resources, with
farming and livestock production using about 70 percent of the earth’s surface water supplies,
but it’s also a serious water polluter. Around the world, agriculture is the leading cause of water
degradation. In the United States, agricultural pollution is the top source of contamination in
rivers and streams, the second-biggest source in wetlands, and the third main source in lakes. It’s
also a major contributor of contamination to estuaries and groundwater. Every time it rains,
fertilizers, pesticides, and animal waste from farms and livestock operations wash nutrients and
pathogens—such bacteria and viruses—into our waterways. Nutrient pollution, caused by excess
nitrogen and phosphorus in water or air, is the number-one threat to water quality worldwide and
can cause algal blooms, a toxic soup of blue-green algae that can be harmful to people and
wildlife.

Sewage and wastewater

Used water is wastewater. It comes from our sinks, showers, and toilets (think sewage) and from
commercial, industrial, and agricultural activities (think metals, solvents, and toxic sludge). The
term also includes stormwater runoff, which occurs when rainfall carries road salts, oil, grease,
chemicals, and debris from impermeable surfaces into our waterways
More than 80 percent of the world’s wastewater flows back into the environment without being
treated or reused, according to the United Nations; in some least-developed countries, the figure
tops 95 percent. In the United States, wastewater treatment facilities process about 34 billion
gallons of wastewater per day. These facilities reduce the amount of pollutants such as
pathogens, phosphorus, and nitrogen in sewage, as well as heavy metals and toxic chemicals in
industrial waste, before discharging the treated waters back into waterways. That’s when all goes
well. But according to EPA estimates, our nation’s aging and easily overwhelmed sewage
treatment systems also release more than 850 billion gallons of untreated wastewater each year.

Oil pollution
Big spills may dominate headlines, but consumers account for the vast majority of oil pollution
in our seas, including oil and gasoline that drips from millions of cars and trucks every day.
Moreover, nearly half of the estimated 1 million tons of oil that makes its way into marine
environments each year comes not from tanker spills but from land-based sources such as
factories, farms, and cities. At sea, tanker spills account for about 10 percent of the oil in waters
around the world, while regular operations of the shipping industry—through
both legal and illegal discharges—contribute about one-third. Oil is also naturally released from
under the ocean floor through fractures known as seeps.

Radioactive substances
Radioactive waste is any pollution that emits radiation beyond what is naturally released by the
environment. It’s generated by uranium mining, nuclear power plants, and the production and
testing of military weapons, as well as by universities and hospitals that use radioactive materials
for research and medicine. Radioactive waste can persist in the environment for thousands of
years, making disposal a major challenge. Consider the decommissioned Hanford nuclear
weapons production site in Washington, where the cleanup of 56 million gallons of radioactive
waste is expected to cost more than $100 billion and last through 2060. Accidentally
released or improperly disposed of contaminants threaten groundwater, surface water, and
marine resources.
What Are the Effects of Water Pollution?

On human health
To put it bluntly: Water pollution kills. In fact, it caused 1.8 million deaths in 2015, according to
a study published in The Lancet. Contaminated water can also make you ill. Every year, unsafe
water sickens about 1 billion people. And low-income communities are disproportionately at risk
because their homes are often closest to the most polluting industries.
Waterborne pathogens, in the form of disease-causing bacteria and viruses from human and
animal waste, are a major cause of illness from contaminated drinking water. Diseases spread by
unsafe water include cholera, giardia, and typhoid. Even in wealthy nations, accidental or illegal
releases from sewage treatment facilities, as well as runoff from farms and urban areas,
contribute harmful pathogens to waterways. Thousands of people across the United States are
sickened every year by Legionnaires’ disease (a severe form of pneumonia contracted from
water sources like cooling towers and piped water), with cases cropping up from California’s
Disneyland to Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

A woman using bottled water to wash her three-week-old son at their home in Flint, Michigan
Todd McInturf/The Detroit News/AP
Meanwhile, the plight of residents in Flint, Michigan—where cost-cutting measures and aging
water infrastructure created the recent lead contamination crisis—offers a stark look at how
dangerous chemical and other industrial pollutants in our water can be. The problem goes far
beyond Flint and involves much more than lead, as a wide range of chemical pollutants—from
heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury to pesticides and nitrate fertilizers—are getting into
our water supplies. Once they’re ingested, these toxins can cause a host of health issues, from
cancer to hormone disruption to altered brain function. Children and pregnant women are
particularly at risk.
Even swimming can pose a risk. Every year, 3.5 million Americans contract health issues such as
skin rashes, pinkeye, respiratory infections, and hepatitis from sewage-laden coastal waters,
according to EPA estimates.
On the environment
In order to thrive, healthy ecosystems rely on a complex web of animals, plants, bacteria, and
fungi—all of which interact, directly or indirectly, with each other. Harm to any of these
organisms can create a chain effect, imperiling entire aquatic environments.
When water pollution causes an algal bloom in a lake or marine environment, the proliferation of
newly introduced nutrients stimulates plant and algae growth, which in turn reduces oxygen
levels in the water. This dearth of oxygen, known as eutrophication, suffocates plants and
animals and can create “dead zones,” where waters are essentially devoid of life. In certain cases,
these harmful algal blooms can also produce neurotoxins that affect wildlife, from whales to sea
turtles.
Chemicals and heavy metals from industrial and municipal wastewater contaminate waterways
as well. These contaminants are toxic to aquatic life—most often reducing an organism’s life
span and ability to reproduce—and make their way up the food chain as predator eats prey.
That’s how tuna and other big fish accumulate high quantities of toxins, such as mercury.
Marine ecosystems are also threatened by marine debris, which can strangle, suffocate, and
starve animals. Much of this solid debris, such as plastic bags and soda cans, gets swept into
sewers and storm drains and eventually out to sea, turning our oceans into trash soup and
sometimes consolidating to form floating garbage patches. Discarded fishing gear and other
types of debris are responsible for harming more than 200 different species of marine life.
Meanwhile, ocean acidification is making it tougher for shellfish and coral to survive. Though
they absorb about a quarter of the carbon pollution created each year by burning fossil fuels,
oceans are becoming more acidic. This process makes it harder for shellfish and other species to
build shells and may impact the nervous systems of sharks, clownfish, and other marine life.
What Can You Do to Prevent Water Pollution?

With your actions

It’s easy to tsk-tsk the oil company with a leaking tanker, but we’re all accountable to some
degree for today’s water pollution problem. Fortunately, there are some simple ways you can
prevent water contamination or at least limit your contribution to it:

 Reduce your plastic consumption and reuse or recycle plastic when you can.
 Properly dispose of chemical cleaners, oils, and non-biodegradable items to keep them
from ending up down the drain.
 Maintain your car so it doesn’t leak oil, antifreeze, or coolant.
 If you have a yard, consider landscaping that reduces runoff and avoid applying
pesticides and herbicides.
 If you have a pup, be sure to pick up its poop.