Soil pollution or land pollution is the contamination of land-with domestic wastes, industrial and commercial wastes, chemical fertilizers, pesticides etc. which makes the soil or land unfit for normal living, boil pollution involves the following activities such as dumping of wastes materials or bin garbage, excessive use of agriculture synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, heavy metal pollution, water logging, soil salinity, deforestation and pollution due to plastic materials.
Dumping of Domestic wastes or bin garbage
Sources
Garbages or refuse constitute perishable wastes (that undergoes microbial degradation) which are otherwise known as putrescibie wastes. These wastes are from kitchen wastes and other municipal wastes. Generally the domestic wastes are mixed along with other rubbish materials such as packing materials, broken glass materials, wastes woods, scrap metals etc. Along with these dead garbages or refuse. Sometimes some of the small scale industrial wastes also get into the dumping.
Effects
Garbage dumping causes insects, rodents and virulent micro-organisms to multiply in these environment. These kind of domestic refuse dumping can spread diseases such as typhoid, cholera, malaria etc.
Malaria and Filaria are produced due to mosquito breeding grounds produced due to the dumping of refuse. People or animal come into contact with the refuses are affected by skin diseases also. The garbages or refuses contribute to the seepage of harmful metals and other chemicals to ground water and other land areas.
Control measures
- The commercial wastes such as plastic, glass materials etc. can be separated from various places and they can be sent for recycling process.
- The organic domestic waste matter can be put inside trenches mixed with layers of animal dung and closed outside and kept it for a long time where anaerobic bacterial action produces good natural manure for agriculture. This is otherwise known as composting.
- Always drop the packing materials (paper or plastics) in waste paper bins and the persons who are collecting such materials will hand over them to the recycling units. This system is prevalent in many of the developed countries and has to be followed in our country also.