1) Describe the types and effects of water pollutants
2) investigate water quality today
3)Explain water pollution control
4) Summarize water legislation
Slide one
• In the early days of the industrial revolution people gave little attention to the pollution of lakes , rivers , and the coastal oceans.
• Water pollution
•
"The Silent Highwayman". Cartoon commenting on polluted condition of the Thames. Punch, 10 July
1858. Source: Wikimedia Commons
• The growth of the major industrial cities also caused water pollution. All too often, rivers that pass through urban areas became a receptacle for human waste products, both domestic and industrial. Sewage, as in most cities, was washed out into the streets where it found its way to the rivers with disastrous consequences.
• In the first half of the 18th century, both London and Paris, the largest cities in Europe with respectively 1 and 2.4 million inhabitants by 1850, experienced a series of recurring epidemics of cholera and typhoid. In 1832 over 20,000 Parisians died in a cholera outbreak; London experienced similar outbreaks. This was caused by increasing amounts of sewage dumped into the Seine and Thames rivers.
• London was one of the first cities in the world to build a sewer system and improve the quality of its drinking water supply. The London Board of Health eliminated cesspools in the late 1840s, and a Metropolis Water Act of 1852 forced water companies to move their intakes upstream and regulate their filtration and storage. Drinking water showed significant improvement by the 1850s, yet the problem of the Thames hit daily by 260 tons of raw sewage by the late 1850s-caused the most stir in the popular press as well as debate in parliament. Plans for a central drainage system were stalled through much of that decade by the uncertainties of medical science and the obstruction by London’s