Environmental Science

March 31, 2012

Environmental Science

What determines water quality standards? Three classes of attributes: biological, chemical, and physical help in determining water quality standards. However major problems of pollutants are heavy metals, mercury, pathogens nutrients, and sediments. Pathogens are disease carrying bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Sediments are materials that are broken down naturally by the process of erosion and weathering, and are cared on by water and wind. Nutrients are inorganic materials that are essential for plants. Even though many of these materials may be in our water they are only a problem under certain conditions where the water affects the health of the environment and human life.

The EPA established the National Recommended Water Quality Criteria, which is a table containing recommended water quality criteria for the protection if aquatic life and human health in surface water for about 167 pollutants to provide standards for assessing water pollution. The Safe Drinking Water Act appointed the EPA to set limits on the number of particular contaminants that are not allowed in drinking water that are considered unhealthy and unsafe. Many of the primary standards of drinking water that we are protected from include toxic chemicals, radioactive elements, and microbial contaminants. The highest level of a contaminant that is allowed in drinking water is considered the maximum contaminant level. Non enforceable guidelines regulating contaminants that may cause offensive taste, odor, and color, foaming, or staining in drinking water are secondary drinking water standards.

Many of the water pollutants that are in water are all a contribution of simple human activity that we do every day by using detergents, cleaning solvents, and pesticides. People use water for a number of things ranging from drinking, swimming, showering, watering the grass, cleaning, and washing clothes just to name a few. I don’t know how we would...