Classifying water pollution

The major sources of water pollution can be classified as municipal, industrial, and agricultural. Municipal water pollution consists of waste water from homes and commercial establishments. For many years, the main goal of treating municipal wastewater was simply to reduce its content of suspended solids, oxygen-demanding materials, dissolved inorganic compounds, and harmful bacteria. In recent years, however, more stress has been placed on improving means of disposal of the solid residues from the municipal treatment processes. The basic methods of treating municipal wastewater fall into three stages: primary treatment, including grit removal, screening, grinding, and sedimentation; secondary treatment, which entails oxidation of dissolved organic matter by means of using biologically active sludge, which is then filtered off; and tertiary treatment, in which advanced biological methods of nitrogen removal and chemical and physical methods such as granular filtration and activated carbon absorption are employed. The handling and disposal of solid residues can account for 25 to 50 percent of the capital and operational costs of a treatment plant. The characteristics of industrial waste waters can differ considerably both within and among industries. The impact of industrial discharges depends not only on their collective characteristics, such as biochemical oxygen demand and the amount of suspended solids, but also on their content of specific inorganic and organic substances. Three options are available in controlling industrial wastewater. Control can take place at the point of generation in the plant; wastewater can be pretreated for discharge to municipal treatment sources; or wastewater can be treated completely at the plant and either reused or discharged directly into receiving water.

Agriculture, including commercial livestock and poultry farming, is the source of many organic and inorganic pollutants in surface waters and groundwater. These contaminants include both sediment from erosion cropland and compounds of phosphorus and nitrogen that partly originate in animal wastes and commercial fertilizers. Animal wastes are high in oxygen demanding material, nitrogen and phosphorus, and they often harbor pathogenic organisms. Wastes from commercial feeders are contained and disposed of on land; their main threat to natural waters, therefore, is from runoff and leaching. Control may involve settling basins for liquids, limited biological treatment in aerobic or anaerobic lagoons, and a variety of other methods.

Malaria in russia

Dozens of people acquire malaria infections in Moscow annually due to people who arrive in the city front southern countries. Surprisingly, however, people occasionally get infected from home-grown strains of the disease.

According to a letter by the Federal Service for Supervision in Consumer Rights' Protection and Human Welfare (Rospotrebnadzor) to head of the Federal Tourism Agency, Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, 15 malaria cases were registered in Russia from January to March of this year. The disease came from Africa (predominantly the Con-go) and southeastern Asia (mainly India, including the state of Goa).

Last year, 128 incidents of malaria were registered in Russia. Two of the cases proved fatal. The average annual rate is 100 cases, with the bulk of them occurring in Moscow, Moscow Region and St. Petersburg. Rospotrebnadzor stated.

Usually the disease spreads along transport routes. Tourists, for example, travel to tropical countries and completely forget about any preventive measures against diseases, such as inoculation.

For those using tourist agencies, staff usually warn about the threats and give recommendations on how to properly prepare for medical aspects of the trip. Rospotrebnadzor has also posted written rules on its website on how to avoid health problems when traveling abroad.

Less than half of all malaria cases in Russia, however, are caused by guests from tropical countries.

Malaria carriers, such as mosquitoes, propagate mainly in small ponds with ditch-water rich in vegetation. Reservoirs make fertile breeding grounds. As a result, Rospotrebnadzor regularly sprays reservoirs' surfaces with insecticidal chemicals such as Bacticide. The human welfare service successfully eradicated the bulk of the mosquitoes' larvae at several Moscow administrative districts in the beginning of June.

Since then, however, reservoirs at Druzh-ba Park, Strouino, the Barv-shikha and Fefortovo recreation areas, and Akademicheskiye and Golo-v inskiye ponds have made the black list. Officials at these areas were ordered to hold additional sanitizations.

Rospotrebnadzor has also pointed out that doctors in Russia often lack qualification to diagnose patients and provide the appropriate medical treatment in a timely fashion. Even more often, they fail to determine the exact form of the disease. This may lead to multiple after-effects resulting in the patient's death.

Still, the common recommendation is that if a person experiences a headache, temperature, sickness or any other disorder after visiting malaria-prone countries, he or she should immediately go to a doctor for testing.

Viktor Maleev, the Russia's main infectiologist, told Interfax that hot and damp weather, as recently experienced in the Moscow region, contributes to insects' intensive propagation, including that of malaria mosquitoes. Flow ever, the malaria situation in the city is not critical now. Maleev said. Only isolated incidences of malaria infection have been registered in the capital in recent years, lie suggested that further developments of the malaria situation remain to be seen.

By Sergey Dmitriyev