12 Rivers -

Ihlet Lifewater Concept Global Water Pollution Monitoring Network

Why is Water Pollution Monitoring important?

This program of the Rapfound Ecotech s.r.l. would like to draw international attention to the necessity of joint action. International attention should be focused on this urgent problem for mankind, the dwindling and increasingly polluted drinking water resources of the world. The result should be quality drinking water equally available and secure for everyone.

Let’s see what the data shows us

During the last UN World Water Day it was pointed out that drinking water resources are rapidly decreasing, and how important it is to have healthy drinking water available to everybody. The unavailability of healthy drinking water is particularly a big problem for children.

According to one prognosis by the year 2040 almost 600 million children might live in an environment where drinking water could only made available with great difficulty.

Recently the European Environmental Agency (EEA) published an all encompassing report regarding the state of 130,000 European bodies of water. Surprisingly only 40% of European surface waters are of good quality. The report also pointed out dangers from agriculture, shipping, hydroelectric power plant constructions, and other pollution sources.

Water pollution has never been a bigger problem

Unfortunately waters of low-lying lands are in particularly bad state, as well as downstream regions of large rivers. The European Union expects the member states to take the Water Framework Directive (WFD) seriously, in other words they should adhere to the directive and promote adherence to it.

By accepting the Water Framework Directive the EU governments undertook to prevent the further destruction of water resources, and to improve the quality by the year 2027. However the published reports show that the member states have ignored the regulations, and unequivocally have not realized them. It is pertinent to point out, that not only production facilities are responsible for the various polluting materials that enter the environment, but end users also share responsibility.

For example in Budapest about 20 tons of pharmaceutical pollution enters the Danube yearly. This is why forums should be organized on a regular basis for decision makers and interested parties. The forums could catalyze the reduction of the amount amount of pharmaceutical residues, plastics, weed killers, insecticides, and fertilizer pollution entering the environment. The interested parties include governmental bodies, agencies, manufacturers, health professionals, agricultural leaders, researchers, and non-governmental organizations.

The medicines used by the population enter environment via the sewage treatment plants, and by direct transmission to surface waters. The pharmaceutical materials are mostly made up of small molecules, and because of the ineffectively filtered sewage, the pollution enters bodies of waters. This is how pharmaceutical residues and hormones, arrive to the life giving waters, from there in to living organisms. On a system wide level the pollution enters in to the food chain.

Several international studies have proven that pharmaceutical residue occurring in small concentrations cannot be removed by sewage treatment methods, and the pollution does appear in drinking wells near river banks. Due to the lack of regulations authorities the world over do not make regular measurements of these locations.

Plastics and other pharmaceuticals

Plastics are widely used in our daily life because of their excellent physical and mechanical properties. 300 million tons of plastic are produced worldwide every year just due to this simple fact. Out of this worldwide production total, 60 million tons are produced in Europe, and interestingly only 10% of these plastics are recycled. A real paradigm shift is required to change this sorry fact. According to current studies, billions of people worldwide are drinking water every day contaminated with plastic particles.

Studies done worldwide have shown that 83% of the water samples contained plastic particulates 5-20 micrometer in size. In half liter American water samples an average of 4.8 micro particles were present, while half liter European samples contained an average 1.9 particles. The studies have shown that micro plastics are not only found in aquatic organisms, but in sea salt samples from China, and in bottled beer samples from Germany. In China 75% of the municipal water, and 90% of surface water, rivers, lakes are polluted. Premature deaths rates are startling. In many regions the cancerous death rates are significant. The main cause is heavy metal and other soil pollutants, as well as pollution in the Yangtze river, which receives 33 billion tons of sewage per year.

Back in Europe, according to a statement from the European Water Association (EWA), besides the re-examination of the Water Framework Directive, it would be imperative for new methods to be developed to protect water resources by identifying all polluted water bodies, and sources of pollution (water pollution monitoring). It is also imperative that the examination process be expanded and made more efficient. There should also be an emphasis for the Water Framework Directive to be harmonized with other European regulations also.