Noise Pollution and Radioactive Pollution

Noise pollution

Noise is the unwanted sound dumped in the atmosphere. It has damaging psychological and physiological effects. It has now been admitted that the sound produced by several industrial machines, aeroplanes, motor-vehicles etc. when continued for longer duration at a high frequency may damage permanently the hearing capacity.

Sound is described in terms of be measured in decibels (dB). We hear ordinary conversation at 50 decibels. A prolonged noise at 95 dB produces deafness nervous tension and rise in blood pressure.

Types of Noise Pollution

Even before taking a closer look at the various causes of noise pollution, let us first understand the two primary types of noise.

Man-Made Noise

This refers to the noise created due to man-made activities. It can be anything from construction work, noise from the air, vehicular traffic, household noise, noise from pubs and bars, to name a few. Ranging from 30 to a whopping 140 dB, this form of noise is extremely harmful to humans.

Environmental Noise

Environmental Noise refers to the kind of noise occurring from a range of environmental activities. This can be anything from the mating call of animals to the sound of thunderstorms that often go up to 140 dB.

Loudness of sound generated by different sources

Source	Sound level(In dB)	Sound
Self whisper	25	Very quiet
Ordinary Conversation	60	Moderate loud
Food blender	85	Very loud
Motorcycle(25 Mt. Away)	90	Very loud
Jet plane(100Mt away)	105	Uncomfortable  loud
Thunderclap	120	Uncomfortable  loud
Hooting of trains	130	Uncomfortable  loud
Jet plane take off		Painful
Rocket engine	180	Painful

Effect of Noise Pollution:

Noise pollution interferes with communication, causes loss of hearing, disturbs mental peace and affects health and even behaviours. Noise also cause mental stress, increase in the rate of heart beat and some time damages eye sight, brain & liver functioning, anxiety and in some cases fright.

1. Hearing Problems

Any unwanted sound that our ears have not been built to filter can cause problems within the body. Our ears can take in a certain range of sounds without getting damaged.Man-made noises such as jackhammers, horns, machinery, airplanes, and even vehicles can be too loud for our hearing range.

2. Psychological Issues

Excessive noise pollution in working areas such as offices, construction sites, bars and even in our homes can influence psychological health.Studies show that the occurrence of aggressive behavior, disturbance of sleep, constant stress, fatigue, depression, anxiety, hysteria and hypertension in humans as well as animals can be linked to excessive noise levels. The level of irritation increases with increased noise, and people tend to become less and less patient. These, in turn, can cause more severe and chronic health issues later in life.

3. Physical Problems

Noise pollution can cause headaches, high blood pressure, respiratory agitation, racing pulse, and, in exposure to extremely loud, constant noise, gastritis, colitis and even heart attacks may occur.

Noise pollution effects in environment:

According to the National Park Service (NPS) in the United States, noise pollution has an enormous environmental impact and does serious damage to wildlife. Experts say noise pollution can interfere with breeding cycles and rearing and is even hastening the extinction of some species.

Control:

The techniques employed for noise control can be  broadly classified as

1. Control at source

• Reducing the noise levels from domestic sectors
• Maintenance of automobiles
• Control over vibration
• Prohibition on usage of loud speakers
• Selection and maintenance of machinery

2. Control in the transmission path

• Installation of barriers
• Design of building
• Green belt development (planting of trees)

3. Using protective equipment.

• Job rotation
• Reduced Exposure time
• Hearing protection
• Documentation of noise measurements, continuous
• Monitoring and awareness are the need of the hour.

Noise Pollution – Indian response

With a view to regulate and control noise producing and generating sources, the Ministry of Environment and Forests has notified the Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules, 2000 under the Environment (Protection) Act 1986, for prevention and control of noise pollution in the country.

The Notification seeks to control noise in public places from various sources such as industrial activity, construction activity, generator sets, loud speakers, public address systems, music systems, vehicular horns and other mechanical devices in order to avoid any adverse affects on human health including physical and psychological impacts.

RADIO ACTIVE POLLUTION

Radioactivity is a phenomenon of spontaneous emission of proton (a-particles), electrons (ß-particles) and  gamma rays (short wave electromagnetic waves) due to disintegration of atomic nuclei of some elements. These  cause radioactive pollution.

Radioactivity is a property of certain elements (radium, thorium, uranium etc.) to spontaneously emit protons (alpha particles) electrons (beta particles) and gamma rays (short-wave electromagnetic wave) by disintegration of their atomic nuclei (nuclides).

Types of Radiations

• Non-ionising radiations affect only those components which absorb them and have low penetrability.
• Ionising radiations have high penetration power and cause breakage of macro molecules.

 Types of radiation particles

• Alpha particles, can be blocked by a piece of paper and human skin.
• Beta particles can penetrate through skin, while can be blocked by some pieces of glass and metal.
•  Gamma rays can penetrate easily to human skin and damage cells on its way through, reaching far, and can only be blocked by a very thick, strong, massive piece of concrete.

Sources

Natural

• They include cosmic rays from space and terrestrial radiations from radio-nuclides present in earth’s crust such as radium-224, uranium-238, thorium-232, potassium-40, carbon-14, etc.

 Man – made

• Atomic explosion (Nuclear fallout):
• The nuclear arms use uranium-235 and plutonium-239 for fission and hydrogen or lithium as fusion material. Atomic explosions produce radioactive particles that are thrown high up into the air as huge clouds. These particles are carried to  long distances by wind and gradually settle over the earth as fall out or are brought down by rain. The fall out contains radioactive substances such  as strontium-90, cesium-137, iodine – 131, etc.
• Nuclear power plants
• Nuclear weapon
• Transportation of nuclear material
• Disposal of nuclear waste
• Uranium mining
• Radiation therapy

 Effects

The effects of radioactive pollutants depend upon

i. half-life

ii. energy releasing capacity

iii. rate of diffusion and

iv. rate of deposition of the pollutant.

v. Various environmental factors such as wind, temperature, rainfall also influence their effects.

Period of Radioactivity

Each radioactive nuclide has a constant decay rate. Half-life is the time needed for half of its atoms to decay. Half-life of a radio nuclide refers to its period of radioactivity. The half-life may vary from a fraction of a second to thousands of years. The radio nuclides with long half-time are the chief source of environmental radioactive pollution.

Radiations are of two types with regard to the mode of  their action on cells.

1. Non-ionising radiations:

• They include short-wave radiations such as ultraviolet rays, which forms a part of solar radiation.
• They have low penetrating power and affect the cells and molecules which absorb them.
• They damage eyes which may be caused by reflections  from coastal sand, snow (snow blindness) directly looking towards sun during eclipse.
• They injure the cells of skin and blood capillaries producing blisters and reddening called sunburns.

2. Ionising radiations.

• They include X-rays, cosmic rays and atomic radiations (radiations emitted by radioactive elements).
• Ionising radiations have high penetration power and cause breakage of macro molecules.
• The molecular damage may produce short range (immediate) or long range (delayed) effects.

SOLID WASTE

Solid wastes are the discarded (abandoned or considered waste-like) materials. Solid waste means any garbage, refuse, sludge from a wastewater treatment plant, or air pollution control facility and other discarded materials including solid, liquid, semi-solid, or contained gaseous material, resulting from industrial, commercial, mining and agricultural operations, and from community activities. But it does not include solid or dissolved materials in domestic sewage, or solid or dissolved materials in irrigation return flows or industrial discharges.

E – WASTE

The discarded and end-of-life electronic products ranging from computers, equipment used in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), home appliances, audio and video products and all of their peripherals are popularly known as Electronic waste (E-waste).

E-waste is not hazardous if it is stocked in safe storage or recycled by scientific methods or transported from one place to the other in parts or in totality in the formal sector. The e-waste can, however, be considered hazardous if recycled by primitive methods.

E – Waste in India

•  “The Global E-Waste Monitor 2014”, 17 lakh tonnes of e-waste generation was reported in the country in 2014. No comprehensive State-wise inventorization of e-waste generation in the country has been done.
• In India, among top ten cities, Mumbai ranks first in generating e-waste followed by Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmadabad, Hyderabad, Pune, Surat and
• Nagpur.
• The 65 cities generate more than 60% of the total gen-erated e-waste, whereas, 10 states generate 70% of the total e-waste.
• Most of the e-waste is recycled in India in unorganized units, which engage significant number of manpower. Recovery of metals by primitive means is a most hazardous act.
• The recycling process, if not carried out properly, can cause damage to human being through inhalation of gases during recycling, contact of the skin with hazard-ous substances and contact during acid treatment used in recovery process.
• Proper education, awareness and most importantly al-ternative cost effective technology need to be provided so that better means can be provided to those who earn the livelihood from this.
• A holistic approach is needed to address the challenges faced by India in e-waste management. A suitable mechanism needs to be evolved to include small units in unorganized sector and large units in organized sector into a single value chain.

Plastic Waste

Plastics are considered to be one of the wonderful inventions of 20th Century. They are widely used as packing and carry bags because of cost and convenience. But plastics are now considered as environmental hazard due to the “Throw away culture”.

 Source of generation of waste plastics

• Household
• Health and medicare
• Hotel and catering
• Air/rail travel
• Food packaging industry

Effects

• The land gets littered by plastic bag garbage and becomes ugly and unhygienic.
• Conventional plastics have been associated with reproductive problems in both humans and wildlife.
• Dioxin (highly carcinogenic and toxic) by-product of the manufacturing process is one of the chemicals believed to be passed on through breast milk to the nursing infant.
• Burning of plastics, especially PVC releases this dioxin and also furan into the atmosphere. Thus, conventional plastics, right from their manufacture to their disposal are a major problem to the environment.
• Plastic bags can also contaminate foodstuffs due to leaching of toxic dyes and transfer of pathogens.
• Careless disposal of plastic bags chokes drains, blocks the porosity of the soil and causes problems for groundwater recharge.
• Types
• Solid wastes are classified depending on their source:
• a) Municipal waste,
• b) Hazardous waste and
• c) Biomedical waste or hospital waste.
• d) Municipal solid waste

a) Municipal waste

• Municipal solid waste consists of household waste, construction and demolition debris, sanitation residue, and waste from streets.
• With rising urbanization and change in lifestyle and food habits, the amount of municipal solid waste has been increasing rapidly and its composition changing.
• In 1947 cities and towns in India generated an estimated 6 million tonnes of solid waste, in 1997 it was about 48 million tonnes. More than 25% of the municipal solid waste is not collected at all.
• 70% of the Indian cities lack adequate capacity to trans-port it and there are no sanitary landfills to dispose of the waste. The existing landfills are neither well equipped and are not lined properly to protect against contamination of soil and groundwater.
• Over the last few years, the consumer market has grown rapidly leading to products being packed in cans, aluminium foils, plastics, and other such nonbiodegradable items that cause incalculable harm to the environment.

b) Hazardous waste

• Industrial and hospital waste is considered hazardous as they contain toxic substances. Hazardous wastes could be highly toxic to humans, animals, and plants and are corrosive, highly inflammable, or explosive.
• India generates around 7 million tonnes of hazardous wastes every year, most of which is concentrated in four states: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu.
• Household waste that can be categorized as hazardous waste include old batteries, shoe polish, paint tins, old medicines, and medicine bottles.
• In the industrial sector, the major generators of hazardous waste are the metal, chemical, paper, pesticide, dye, refining, and rubber goods industries.
• Direct exposure to chemicals in hazardous waste such as mercury and cyanide can be fatal.

c. Hospital waste

• Hospital waste is generated during the diagnosis, treatment, or immunization of human beings or animals or in research activities or in the production or testing of biological.
• These chemicals include formaldehyde and phenols, which are used as disinfectants, and mercury, which is used in thermometers or equipment that measure blood pressure.
• It may include wastes like soiled waste, disposables, anatomical waste, cultures, discarded medicines, chemical wastes, disposable syringes, swabs, bandages, body fluids, human excreta, etc.
• These are highly infectious and can be a serious threat to human health if not managed in a scientific and discriminate manner.
• Surveys carried out by various agencies show that the health care establishments in India are not giving due attention to their waste management.
• After the notification of the Bio-medical Waste (Handling and Management) Rules, 1998, these establishments are slowly streamlining the process of waste segregation, collection, treatment, and disposal.

Treatment and disposal of solid waste

i) Open dumps

Open dumps refer to uncovered areas that are used to dump solid waste of all kinds. The waste is untreated, uncovered, and not segregated. It is the breeding ground for flies, rats, and other insects that spread disease. The rainwater run-off from these dumps contaminates nearby land and water thereby spreading disease. Treatment by open dumps is to be phased out.

ii) Landfills

Landfills are generally located in urban areas. It is a pit that is dug in the ground. The garbage is dumped and the pit is covered with soil everyday thus preventing the breeding of flies and rats. Thus, every day, garbage is dumped and sealed. After the landfill is full, the area is covered with a thick layer of mud and the site can thereafter be developed as a parking lot or a park.

Problems - All types of waste are dumped in landfills and when water seeps through them it gets contaminated and in turn pollutes the surrounding area. This contamination of groundwater and soil through landfills is known as leaching.

iii) Sanitary landfills

Sanitary landfill is more hygienic and built in a methodical manner to solve the problem of leaching. These are lined with materials that are impermeable such as plastics and clay, and are also built over impermeable soil. Constructing sanitary landfills is very costly.

iv) a) Municipal waste

The process of burning waste in large furnaces at high temperature is known as incineration. In these plants the recyclable material is segregated and the rest of the material is burnt and ash is produced.

Burning garbage is not a clean process as it produces tonnes of toxic ash and pollutes the air and water. A large amount of the waste that is burnt here can be recovered and recycled. In fact, at present, incineration is kept as the last resort and is used mainly for treating the infectious waste.

v) Pyrolysis

It is a process of combustion in absence of oxygen or the material burnt under controlled atmosphere of oxygen.  It is an alternative to incineration. The gas and liquid thus obtained can be used as fuels. Pyrolysis of carbonaceous wastes like firewood, coconut, palm waste, corn combs, cashew shell, rice husk paddy straw and saw dust, yields charcoal along with products like tar, methyl alcohol, acetic acid, acetone and a fuel gas.

vi) Composting

• Composting is a biological process in which micro-organisms, mainly fungi and bacteria, decompose degradable organic waste into humus like substance in the presence of oxygen.
• This finished product, which looks like soil, is high in carbon and nitrogen and is an excellent medium for  growing plants.
• It increases the soil’s ability to hold water and makes the soil easier to cultivate. It helps the soil retain more plant nutrients.
• It recycles the nutrients and returns them back to soil as nutrients.
• Apart from being clean, cheap, and safe, composting can significantly reduce the amount of disposable garbage.

vii) Vermiculture

It is also known as earthworm farming. In this method, Earth worms are added to the compost. These worms break the waste and the added excreta of the worms  makes the compost very rich in nutrients.

viii) Four R’s –

Waste Minimization Circles (WMC)

WMC helps Small and Medium Industrial Clusters in waste minimization in their industrial plants.

• This is assisted by the World Bank with the Ministry of Environment and Forests acting as the nodal ministry. The project is being implemented with the assistance of  National Productivity Council (NPC), New Delhi.
• The initiative also aims to realize the objectives of the Policy Statement for Abatement of Pollution (1992),  which states that the government should educate citizens about environmental risks, the economic and health dangers of resource degradation and the real economic cost of natural resources.
• The policy also recognizes that citizens and non-governmental organizations play a role in environmental monitoring, therefore, enabling them to supplement the regulatory system and recognizing their expertise where such exists and where their commitments and vigilance would be cost effective.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and plastic waste :

Extended Producer Responsibility is a policy approach under which producers are given a significant responsibility – financial and/or physical – for the treatment or disposal of post-consumer products.

Assigning such responsibility could in principle provide incentives to prevent wastes at the source, promote product design for the environment and support the achievement of public recycling and materials management goals.

Other dimension of pollution:

Emerging threat of space pollution :

Space debris (also known as space junk, space pollution,space waste, space trash, or space garbage) is a term for defunct human-made objects in space—principally in Earth orbit—which no longer serve a useful function. These include derelict spacecraft—nonfunctional spacecraft and abandoned launch vehicle stages—mission-related debris, and particularly numerous in Earth orbit, fragmentation debris from the breakup of derelict rocket bodies and spacecraft. In addition to derelict human-built objects left in orbit, other examples of space debris include fragments from their disintegration, erosion and collisions, or even paint flecks, solidified liquids expelled from spacecraft, and unburned particles from solid rocket motors. Space debris represents a risk to spacecraft.

Space debris is typically a negative externality—it creates an external cost on others from the initial action to launch or use a spacecraft in near-Earth orbit—a cost that is typically not taken into account nor fully accounted for in the cost by the launcher or payload owner. Several spacecraft, both manned and unmanned, have been damaged or destroyed by space debris.[citation needed] The measurement, mitigation, and potential removal of debris are conducted by some participants in the space industry.

The Kessler Syndrome is a theoretical scenario in which Earth's orbit is overpopulated with objects and debris, preventing the use of satellites in certain sections of Earth's orbit. In this scenario, space pollution is perpetuated by collisions between orbiting objects, creating more debris and thus creating a domino effect of future collisions.

ACID RAIN

Acid rain is the rainfall that has been acidified. It is formed when oxides of sulfur and nitrogen react with the moisture in the atmosphere. It is rain with a pH of less than 5.6. Acid rain is particularly damaging to lakes, streams, and forests and the plants and animals that live in these ecosystems.

It also affects the archaeological sites like Tajmahaj is getting yellowish due to acid rain. ,,,