Does garbage pollution have a negative effect on city's environment? Garbage in a city can cause a variety of problems. These include contamination of ground water, surface water, and even the cities water system, if leaching of chemicals occurs from the disposal site. A lowering of pH by these chemicals can add to acidity problems in the water and even the air. Landfills can cause contamination of ground water up-to 500 kilometers radius, can also cause sealing of the ground surface, which will lead to flooding. Disposal areas attract wildlife, such as rats, dogs and birds. Besides causing a danger of wildlife/ human interactions (birds flying into planes, or dogs in roaming in packs) these usually bring diseases with them, such as plague, meningitis, pneumonitis, and toxoplama-gondii. Another problem is the accumulation of infectious or toxic waste items. May people in cities do no destroy dangerous items, they often just throw objects that should be incinerated. This can create a heap of items as dangerous as medical waste or toxic and corrosive chemicals. Often there are infectious diseases associated with medical waste that can cause or heighten an epidemic. In short, garbage pollution in a city causes a myriad of problems. These include but are not limited to contamination of air & water, increased disease risk, attraction of undesirable wildlife, soil sealing and flood problems. INTRODUCTION: Garbage accumulation in cities has been a problem all over the world for centuries. Garbage is created both at a government level and at the level of individual households. Landfills have always been regarded as sources of disease flies pests and offensive odors. Early in their development cities generally have few disposal regulations and individual homes disposed of garbage in their own unique ways. Therefore, means of disposal were based on the culture, background, occupation and size of each of the different households Cities must regulate garbage disposal in order to educate the population and have their cooperation. Most people are willing to cooperate with disposal regulations as long as they don’t have to live with the results of garbage accumulation . In order for a city to remain clean of the accumulation of garbage there is a balance to be had between the participation and cooperation of each household and the city government. Each urban area is going to have unique concerns and decisions to be made as to the best way of disposing of garbage . Clearly Cities are complex ecosystems. They have to balance all of the uses by all of the citizens and institutions. One of the major problems is
facing a city is the disposal of waste, in this discussion,, specifically garbage. There is no solution to the problem unless the infrastructure of a city is designed to address this problem . One study looked at the differences between soils of urban and nonurban area. The soil pattern of urban areas is strongly influenced by human activities. Specific characteristics of urban areas soils were lowered ground water table and soil surface sealing . Soil sealing, is the process of soils becoming less permeable to water. This causes depletion of ground water as well as creating flooding problems on the surface . Since February 1, 1998, Calcutta is the first city in India to segregate medical clinical and biomedical wastes at hospitals. This prevents hazardous, sometimes toxic and infectious wastes from going into dumps with ordinary garbage. But, this means that other cities in India are still disposing of such infectious and toxic wastes in the land fills. It also means that the Calcutta landfill has such wastes in them which were deposited prior to 1998 (Calcutta Calmanac). In short, garbage pollution in a city causes a myriad of problems. These include but are not limited to contamination of air & water, increased disease risk, attraction of undesirable wildlife, soil sealing and flood problems. WATER POLLUTION: Rain water percolates through garbage. The runoff from the rain will then become contaminated by the sewage, sediment, chemicals and diseases that are contained by that garbage. It is therefore necessary for garbage dumps to either be waterproof or clear of water born contaminants. Or, a better solution is to have garbage disposal not present in the water shed of the public drinking supply. The ultimate solution is immediate processing digestion of MSW process mentioned in detail below. Inappropriate disposal of sewage and garbage has led to the substantially deterioration of ground water. Unfortunately, the growing population and inadequacy of many municipal water supplies has led to the exploitation of ground water for public drinking water. Bacteria is often found in the ground water of urban areas due to the sewage and garbage dumps (Hussain, et. al, 2001). Various Leachates from municipal solid wastes in certain urban areas are also found to be a substantial problem (Hamed, et al.). In manycases, the leachats are getting into the surface water, ground water and the public drinking supply. HEALTH: There have been a variety of studies done that show health deterioration in areas where there is not proper disposal of garbage. A
variety of diseases that are shown to be at least exacerbated, if not caused by the presence of open garbage, or inadequate garbage landfills. FRENKEL, et al, (1995), found a serious problem with Toxoplasm-gondii. Pneumonitis, induced by avian antigens was found by Carrillo-Rodriguez, et al, (2000), to be primarily associated with garbage dumps. Amoebic diseases have been found concentrated in the soil and in the air in greater proximity to urban garbage dumps (RIVERA, et al., 1994). And, the disturbing phenomenon of “Biofilms” have been shown to form from urban water sources. It is a film that forms inside such places as dental instruments. It is from the concentration of free-living amoebae that is in the water supply, some of which are potential human pathogens (Barbeau and Buhler, 2001). EFFECTS ON URBAN WILDLIFE: It has been shown by many researchers that garbage dumps often attract insects pest both wild and feral animals huge rodents. Urban dumps create an environment that will cause the accumulation of unhealthy concentrations of wildlife. Often, it creates situation where garbage eating species will out compete the native species, that eat native vegetation. Thus, the new garbage eating species replace the native species. (Clergeau P et al., 1998, Blair, 1996). Clearly, as stated before, these high concentrations of certain animals bring and spread diseases to the people in the areas. Meningitis, pnumosistis, the black plaque, are all diseases that are carried by the types of animals that are attracted to garbage dumps. Also, are problems with bacteria and nutrient contamination from high population concentration. That doesn’t even address the nuisance factor. High concentrations of birds and rodent populations leave high concentrations of feces and other residue. They also cause problems by their presences in numbers. Feral dogs, which are attracted to dumps often form into packs, which can be very dangerous. Dumps are also not healthy for the wildlife themselves that visit them. Many types of garbage is eaten or explored by urban wildlife will cause entrapment or painful deaths. REGULATION: Many cities around the world are attempting to regulate garbage disposal in a variety of ways. Some f the ways of reducing garbage is by recycling and reusing as much as is feasible. Many urban areas are attempting to encourage that. Another way is to make it easy to properly dispose of garbage. Or to make it very expensive, or difficult to improperly dispose of it. Many areas are prohibiting non recyclables in certain products. Others are making it illegal to dispose of certain dangerous items without the proper authorization. Calcutta, India is an example of a city that is strongly creating and enforcing legislation to
control garbage disposal. (Calcutta Calmanc). SOLUTIONS:
IMMEDIATE DISPOSAL IS THE ONLY SOLUTION Rather than control garbage disposal through negative legislation,there are many people attempting to come up with positive break through solutions We at JDR ECOCLEAN I LTD with the help of our principals in Japan are offering you a breakthrough technology For centuries, one of the most eternal problems facing mankind has been the dilemma of how to dispose of our garbage. Today, with global populations expected to climb into the tens of billions within the next century, never before in history has the issue of garbage disposal been more pressing. Our society must find new ways not only to reduce, reuse, and recycle our materials, but to detoxify our wastewater, soils, and environment as well. The answer may lie in the adopted widespread use of Effective Micro-organisms (EM) to detoxify our landfills, decontaminate our environment, and promote highly sustainable, closed-cycle agricultural and organic waste treatment methods worldwide. Present waste management techniques with microorganisms have a cycle time of 6-8weeks but our equipment has the
lowest cycle time of 2 hours=IMMEDIATE DISPOSAL The process is totally environment friendly simple CONCLUSION: Garbage pollution is a serious problem in urban areas. Disposal has been a concern of urban governments since the first city. It can cause a myriad of problems for the citizens and wildlife in the urban area. These range from creating an unpleasant atmosphere to creating a center for disease infection, to altering the environmental quality of the water, soil and native populations. Ref The Hindu COIMBATORE: Mr P. Muthuveeran took charge as Commissioner of the Coimbatore Corporation on Friday and began preliminary works to assess problems faced in solid waste management in the city. Apart from a number of other needs of the city, he said there would be a special focus on the `menace of garbage'. This included problems posed by Corporation's compost yard in Vellalore.
Moovarasampet Lake now a garbage dump K. Manikandan Panchayat doing little to protect the water resource, say
residents
CRYING FOR ATTENTION: The Moovarasampet lake is fast shrinking in spread as the local body is dumping garbage in the water body. — Photo: K. Manikandan
TAMBARAM: Another lake in Chennai's southern suburbs faces the threat of extinction due to continuous dumping of garbage by the local body and lack of support from the government department. Sandwiched between Medavakkam Main Road and Pallavaram-Thoraipakkam Radial Road, the Moovarasampet Lake, spread over 100 acres, serves as a source of groundwater in the Pallavaram Municipality, Madipakkam and Moovarsampettai panchayats. For more than two years, civic workers of the village panchayat have been dumping garbage in the lake. What was once a small heap has now become a mound. Residents of Moovarampettai charged the village panchayat authorities and its elected representatives with taking little steps to put an end to the menace.