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River pollution and health influence: Pollutant Empower Density (PED) analysis for China’s Huai River
Citation:
Zhu, D., M. Kung, AND Dan Campbell. River pollution and health influence: Pollutant Empower Density (PED) analysis for China’s Huai River. Chapter 13, New Trends in Nanotechnology, Material and Environmental Sciences. AV Akademikerverlag, Riga, Latvia, , 279-290, (2018).
Impact/Purpose:
In the previous chapter, total maximum daily load was determined for the Huai River and relevant policy revisions were discussed. In this chapter, another method, Pollutant Empower Density (PED), is used to create a mass balance diagram in order to analyze the pollution levels and overall health of Huai River. Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), nitrogen, phosphorous, Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), and heavy metals are the pollutants that are included in the analysis. The results of the study provide an in-depth understanding of pollution in the Huai River, and we discuss how this relates to acute and chronic health effects in humans. Since PED has not been used to analyze pollution in rivers in Asia before, the methodology of this research can also be applied to other heavily polluted rivers in Asia, such as the Yellow River or the Ganges River.
Description:
As mentioned in the previous chapter, the pollution in the Huai River is quite severe. In this chapter, we continue to examine the severity of the pollution by assessing the Huai River using the Pollutant Empower Density (PED) method. PED is a recent development based on Odum’s emergy synthesis that calculates the flux of each pollutant and the productivity of the background environment [1]. The mass balance diagram in this research is a flowchart that estimates the nitrogen, phosphorus, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) entering and leaving the Huai River watershed system. A mass balance diagram is calculated for the Huai River to demonstrate the link between human activities and the amount of pollutants in the river. This diagram provided a macroscopic view of the flow of pollutants into the river basin. After this, we discuss what the data mean in terms of public health issues and conclude the chapter with limitations, implications, and future research directions.