Plastic and its products are main reason for water pollution of Bangladesh by

IMRUL SADAT ,http://imrulsadat1.blogspot.com

According to the study, two-thirds of the pollution comes from the 20 most polluting rivers, the
overwhelming majority in Asia with the Yangtze River in China topping the list Plastic that is
dumped in rivers and then ends up in the world’s oceans is one of the major sources of marine
pollution, a new study said this week, with Asian waterways the main culprits.

Researchers at The Ocean Cleanup — a Dutch foundation developing new technologies for
ridding the oceans of plastic — say rivers carry an estimated 1.15-2.41m tonnes of plastic into
the sea every year, an amount that need between 48,000 to over 100,000 dump trucks to carry it
away. A study conducted by Wasa claims that the water quality of six rivers around Dhaka has
been polluted to the extent that they are unusable for humans, aquatic lives and industry.The
study, titled “An Analytical Study of the Pollution Profile of the Major Rivers around Dhaka
City” was conducted by Plasma Plus Application and Research Laboratory on behalf of Dhaka
Wasa and financed by the World Bank. Amir H Khan, leader of the study team, said: “The
current state of water quality of the surrounding rivers of Dhaka is the ultimate result of extreme
pollution.“The government should take appropriate measures to check the pollution urgently,
otherwise it will be tough to meet the growing demand of capital’s rising population.”Pollution is
so severe in the Buriganga, Shitalakkhya, Dhaleshwari, Turag Bongshi and Balu rivers that it is
almost impossible to treat the water and make it suitable for humans, the study says.Dissolved
Oxygen (DO) and Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) are the majors among the 12 parameters
of water quality measurement of any surface water. Both of these parameters in the six rivers are
far away from the acceptable level.For instance, Department of Environment (DoE) sets the
standard level of DO in the water as 6 mg/litre but none of the six river’s water ever came close
to the standard during the entire study period.In case of BOD, all of the rivers’ water shows the
level above 2mg/litre, the maximum level for potable water.The findings of the study were
presented at a seminar at CIRDAP auditorium on Sunday.Dhaka Wasa is responsible for
supplying safe drinking water for the capital’s 17m residents. Against the daily demand of 250-
300 crore liters of water in Dhaka city, 78% is supplied by extracting groundwater while the
remaining 22% is supplied after treating the water of the surrounding rivers.The study was
conducted after collecting water samples from 10 separate points of each river with 2km distance
between the closest points, from April to December in 2015.Syeda Rizwana Hasan, chief
executive of Bangladesh Environmentalist Lawyers Association (Bela) blamed indiscriminate
discharge from industries including tannery effluents for the horrible conditions of the rivers, and
condemned the government for siding with the errant industries instead of trying to save the
environment and the ecology.Citing the example of Hazaribagh tannery, she said: “The tannery
industry destroyed the river Buriganga but the government has been trying to compensate them
for relocation, instead of penalising them.”It was once the lifeline of the Bangladeshi capital. But
the once mighty Buriganga river, which flows by Dhaka, is now one of the most polluted rivers
in Bangladesh because of rampant dumping of industrial and human waste.“Much of the
Buriganga is now gone, having fallen to ever insatiable land grabbers and industries dumping
untreated effluents into the river,”“The water of the Buriganga is now so polluted that all fish
have died, and increasing filth and human waste have turned it like a black gel. Even rowing
across the river is now difficult for it smells so badly,” he told reporters.The plight of the
Buriganga symbolises the general state of many rivers in Bangladesh, a large flat land criss-
crossed by hundreds of rivers which faces an uphill battle to keep them navigable and their water
safe for human and aquatic lives.Bangladesh has about 230 small and large rivers, and a large
chunk of the country’s 140 million people depend on them for a living and for transportation.But
experts say many of them are drying up or are choked because of pollution and encroachment.A
World Bank study said four major rivers near Dhaka – the Buriganga, Shitalakhya, Turag and
Balu — receive 1.5 million cubic metres of waste water every day from 7,000 industrial units in
surrounding areas and another 0.5 million cubic metres from other sources.