5 Different Industrial Plants That Release Contaminated Water in the Environment

You are one of the major economic drivers of your country, considering that you have your industrial plant. It is because you are producing some essential products that many people will use on a daily basis. In a nutshell, you are someone who is expanding the GDP of your country. But are you only making a positive impact on your society and not affecting it in any sense? Think again about environmental prospects and the industrial wastewater you are releasing as effluent discharge. If not, this piece will let you explore those facets or categories in which, if you fall, you are somewhere giving a dent to your vicinity and nearby ecosystem. 

Food Processing

You can be the one who is serving your people processed food like meat, chicken, fish, or with some sort of vegan material that you are delivering directly to the markets, food chains, or restaurants. In those instances, you might be surely getting blessings from those who are consuming them and remembering you in their wishes for sure. Great, isn’t it? But, the water that must be drinking is getting contaminated by YOU. How? Remember again that you are an owner of a food processing plant, and if you are providing meat, chicken, or fish to the people, you need to understand that you are processing these materials by removing the excessive bodily fluids, blood, and intestinal matter that may contain high volumes and loads of contaminants and particulate matter.

Wastewater Treatment Plant

If you claim that you are somewhere cleaning the ecology of your area as you have a wastewater treatment plant, then mind you SIR/MA’AM, you are still living with the wrong notion. It is because these wastewater treatment plants are themselves creating some sort of waste that they have to release. Why? Imagine that you have a plant where you treat wastewater. What are you using? Most probably, chlorine is a disinfectant. But even chlorine-disinfected reclaimed water has some by-products such as haloacetic acid and trihalomethanes. In addition to this, biosolids (solid residues of wastewater treatment plants) contain some common chemicals that are also present in fertilizers, apart from heavy metals and synthetic organic compounds. 

Power Plants

You can be a crucial power supplier of your country, but you are not completely healing society as some negative tenets are attached to your efforts. Yes, that’s true. See, if you are running a coal-fired plant or any power plant that is running on fossil fuel, you are a major emitter of heavy metals, including chromium, lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, selenium, etc., as these elements create a significant level of pollution. Hence, you may be the source of emitting bulbs and tube lights of houses; you are also the ONE who contaminates those houses by releasing harmful discharge. 

Gas Drilling

Ready to make the water of your area more saline? Well, you may have no wrong intention to do so, but somewhere you will if you are dealing in gas drilling, especially for shale gas. Shale gas is no less than hazardous waste. It is a highly salty compound with around 32000 mg per liter of sodium as a component and when it gets mixed with water or other industrial chemicals to manifest the drilling, thus, adding to methanol, chloride, and sulphate parts. 

Steel Production

A country like Australia may not be sitting on the top-notch position of the world map when it comes to steel production, but somewhere you are making efforts to bring it for sure. However, steel plants are one of the biggest breeding grounds of water contamination as during the initial phases of its production, water is getting mixed with cyanide and ammonia. And, if you are converting the produced steel into sheets, you will be using water as a coolant and lubricant with other hydraulic oils, tallow, and particulate solids. Thus, water as an effluent may contain benzene, naphthalene, anthracene, phenols, and cresols. 

Conclusion

Hence, it is important to take all sorts of measures to detect the quality of water you are releasing from your industrial plant. For this purpose, you can install water quality monitoring equipment.