Does Pollution Management Have Concrete Solution Globally?

Environmental sustainability implies meeting our current needs without jeopardizing the right and the ability of future generations to meet theirs.

Opportunities should be identified and taken to reduce the production of wastes and the use of toxic materials, to prevent soil, water, and air pollution, and to conserve and reuse resources, as feasible. Environmental pollution with its health impacts is a key issue for a sustainable environment.

Sustainability is not just about the environment; it’s also about our health as a society in ensuring that no people or areas of life suffer as a result of environmental legislation, and it’s also about examining the longer-term effects of the actions humanity takes and asking questions about how it may be improved. Sustainability has become a wide-ranging term that can be applied to almost every facet of life on earth, from local to a global scale and over various time periods.

In the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, countries have committed to engage in systematic follow-up and review of progress towards the Goals and targets, using a set of global indicators. While cities occupy just 3% of the Earth’s land, they are a driving force of social, economic, and environmental change.

Interventions to Reduce Air Pollution

Reducing air pollution exposure is largely a technical issue. Technologies to reduce pollution at its source are plentiful, as are technologies that reduce pollution by filtering it away from the emission source (end-of-pipe solutions). Getting these technologies applied in practice requires government or corporate policies that guide technical decision-making in the right direction.

Such policies could involve outright bans (such as requiring lead-free gasoline or asbestos-free vehicle brake linings or building materials); guidance on desirable technologies (such as providing best-practice manuals); or economic instruments that make using more polluting technologies more expensive than using less polluting technologies (an example of the polluter pays principle). The technologies to reduce air pollution include the use of lead-free gasoline, which allows the use of catalytic converters on vehicles' exhaust systems. Such technologies significantly reduce the emissions of several air pollutants from vehicles.

Power plants and industrial plants that burn fossil fuels use a variety of filtering methods to reduce particles and scrubbing methods to reduce gases, although no effective method is currently available for the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. High chimneys dilute pollutants, but the combined input of pollutants from a number of smokestacks can still lead to an overload of pollutants.

Managing air pollution interventions involves monitoring air quality, which may focus on exceeding of air quality guidelines in specific hotspots or on attempts to establish a specific population's average exposure to pollution. Sophisticated modeling in combination with monitoring has made it possible to start producing detailed estimates and maps of air pollution levels in key urban areas, thus providing a powerful tool for assessing current health impacts and estimated changes in the health impacts brought about by defined air pollution interventions.

Interventions to Reduce Water Pollution

Water pollution control requires action at all levels of the hierarchical framework. The ideal method to abate and diffuse chemical pollution of waterways is to minimize or avoid the use of chemicals for industrial, agricultural, and domestic purposes. Adapting practices such as organic farming and integrated pest management could help protect waterways. Chemical contamination of waterways from industrial emissions could be reduced by cleaner production processes.

In 1993, the Demonstration in Small Industries for Reducing Wastes Project was started in India with support from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. International and local experts initiated waste control. Other interventions include proper treatment of hazardous waste and recycling of chemical containers and discarded products containing chemicals to reduce solid waste buildup and leaching of toxic chemicals into waterways.

A variety of technical solutions are available to filter out chemical waste from industrial processes. Changing the pH of wastewater or adding chemicals that flocculate the toxic chemicals so that they settle in sedimentation ponds are common methods. The same principle can be used at the individual household level. One example is the use of iron chips to filter out arsenic from contaminated well water in Bangladeshi households.

Implementation of Air Pollution Control Strategies

The broadest analysis of the implementation of control strategies for air pollution was conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the late 1990s. It assumed that the reduction of air pollution resulted from the implementation of the federal Clean Air Act of 1970 and associated state-level regulations and air pollution limits. Thus, if a developing country were to implement an appropriate control strategy for urban air pollution, it might derive significant economic benefits over the subsequent decades. The country's level of economic development, local costs, and local benefit valuations will be important for any cost-benefit assessment.

Implementation of Water Pollution Control Strategies

Water pollution with mercury, cadmium, and arsenic described earlier indicates the economic benefits that can be reaped from effective interventions against chemical water pollution.  WHO has analyzed control strategies for biological water pollution, and water and sanitation improvements in relation to the Millennium Development Goals. The analysis demonstrated the considerable benefits of water and sanitation improvements: for every US$1 invested, the economic return was in the range of US$5 to US$28 for a number of intervention options. Careful analysis of the same type is required for populations particularly vulnerable to chemical water pollution to assess whether control of chemical pollution can also yield significant benefits.

Conclusion

Recycling and the use of biodegradable products must be encouraged. Technologies to reduce air pollution at the source are well established and should be used in all new industrial development. Retrofitting of existing industries and power plants is also worthwhile. The principles and practices of sustainable development, coupled with local research, will help contain or eliminate health risks resulting from chemical pollution. An international collaboration involving both governmental and non-governmental organizations can guide this highly interdisciplinary and inter-sectorial area of pollution control.