Heavy metal pollution of water sources can have serious negative health impacts. Heavy metals like lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury are toxic even in small amounts and can accumulate in living tissues over time. Long term exposure is linked to cancers, neurological disorders, kidney damage, and developmental problems in children. Several incidents of mass poisonings have occurred due to industrial pollution releasing heavy metals into local water supplies and food chains. Strict regulation is needed to treat wastes and monitor public water sources to prevent heavy metal contamination.

1. Water Pollution due to Heavy
metals, Pesticides, Oils and
Detergents
Presented by
Joy H Jones
Roll No 08
M2 EE

2. Heavy Metal contamination in Water Body

3. Heavy Metals
• The term heavy metal refers to any metallic
chemical element that has a relatively high
density and is toxic or poisonous at low
concentrations.

4. Heavy Metals
• Heavy metals are naturally occurring
elements that have a high atomic weight and a
density at least 5 times greater than that of
water.

5. Heavy Metals

6. HEAVY METALS
• are natural components of the Earth's crust
• they cannot be degraded or destroyed
• to a small extent they enter our bodies via food, drinking
water and air
• as trace elements, some heavy metals (e.g. copper,
selenium, zinc) are essential to maintain the metabolism
of the human body
• however, at higher concentrations they can lead to
poisoning
• heavy metal poisoning could result, for instance, from
drinking-water contamination (e.g. lead pipes), high
ambient air concentrations near emission sources, or
intake via the food chain

7. Heavy metals
• Heavy metals are dangerous because they tend
to bioaccumulate.
• Bioaccumulation means an increase in the
concentration of a chemical in a biological organism
over time, compared to the chemical's concentration
in the environment.
• Compounds accumulate in living things any time
they are taken up and stored faster than they are
broken down (metabolized) or excreted.

8. Heavy Metal
Villagers from Sahecun, in southern China,
are suffering from hideous swellings caused
by heavy metal pollution(lead) from a mine
that closed a decade ago. Huang Guiqiang,
58, said: 'The lumps over my body are
incredibly painful, and interspersed
occasionally with periods where I can't feel
anything at all in my body’

9. Heavy Metal
• Heavy metal toxicity can result in
▫ damaged or reduced mental and central nervous function,
▫ lower energy levels,
▫ Damage
 blood composition,
 lungs,
 kidneys,
 liver, and other vital organs.
▫ Long-term exposure may result in
 slowly progressing physical,
 muscular, and neurological degenerative processes that mimic Alzheimer's disease,
 Parkinson's disease,
 muscular dystrophy, and
 multiple sclerosis.
Allergies are not uncommon and repeated long-term contact with some metals or their
compounds may even cause cancer

10. Heavy Metal

11. Lead
• Exposure to inorganic lead occurs in mines and
smelters as well as welding of lead painted
metal, and in battery plants.
• Low or moderate exposure may take place in the
glass industry.
• Lead is present in fuels, on burning it will enter
the air
• Airborne lead can be deposited on soil and
water, thus reaching humans via the food
chain.

12. Lead
• In adults, inorganic lead does not penetrate the
blood–brain barrier, whereas this barrier is
less developed in children. The high
gastrointestinal uptake and the permeable
blood–brain barrier make children especially
susceptible to lead exposure and subsequent
brain damage.

13. Lead
• Acute exposure to lead is known to cause
proximal renal tubular damage.
• Long-term lead exposure may also give rise to
kidney damage

14. Lead
• IARC (International Agency Research on
Cancer) classified lead as a ‘possible human
carcinogen’ based on sufficient animal data
and insufficient human data in 1987.
• lung cancer, stomach cancer and gliomas can be
caused due to lead
• A notably serious effect of lead toxicity is its
teratogenic effect

15. Arsenic
• Arsenic is a widely distributed metalloid,
occurring in rock, soil, water and air.
• Inorganic arsenic is present in groundwater used
for drinking in several countries all over the
world (e.g. Bangladesh, Chile and China),
• Organic arsenic compounds (such as
arsenobetaine) are primarily found in fish,
which thus may give rise to human exposure

16. Man affected with Heavy metal (Arsenic)

17. Arsenic
• The latest WHO evaluation concludes that
arsenic exposure via drinking water is causally
related to cancer in the lungs, kidney, bladder
and skin, the last of which is preceded by
directly observable precancerous lesions.

18. Arsenic
• Uncertainties in the estimation of past exposures
are important when assessing the exposure–
response relationships, but it would seem that
drinking water arsenic concentrations of
approximately 100 μg/l have led to cancer at
these sites, and that precursors of skin cancer
have been associated with levels of 50–100 μg/l.

19. Cadmium
• Found in
▫ Zinc smelting,
▫ waste batteries,
▫ e-waste,
▫ paint sludge,
▫ incinerations & fuel combustion

20. Cadmium entering in Water body

21. Cadmium
• Cadmium is toxic at extremely low levels.
• In humans, long term exposure results in renal
dysfunction.
• Cadmium is also associated with bone defects,
viz; osteomalacia, osteoporosis and spontaneous
fractures, increased blood pressure and
myocardic dysfunctions.

22. Cadmium -effects

23. Mercury
The mercury compound cinnabar (HgS),
was used in pre-historic cave paintings for
red colours, and metallic mercury was
known in ancient Greece where it (as well
as white lead) was used as a cosmetic to
lighten the skin.
In medicine, apart from the previously
mentioned use of mercury as a cure for syphilis,
mercury compounds have also been used as
diuretics [calomel (Hg2Cl2)], and mercury
amalgam is still used for filling teeth in many
countries26

24. Mercury

25. Inorganic Mercury
• Acute mercury exposure may give rise to lung
damage. Chronic poisoning is characterized by
neurological and psychological symptoms, such
as tremor, changes in personality, restlessness,
anxiety, sleep disturbance and depression.
• Renal dysfunctions are also caused by mercury
exposure

26. Organic Mercury
• Methyl mercury poisoning has a latency of 1
month or longer after acute exposure, and the
main symptoms relate to nervous system
damage31.
• High doses may lead to death, usually 2–4 weeks
after onset of symptoms.
•

27. Organic Mercury
• The Minamata catastrophe in Japan in the 1950s was
caused by methyl mercury poisoning from fish
contaminated by mercury discharges to the surrounding
sea.
• Minamata disease was first discovered in Minamata city
in Kumamoto, Japan, in 1956. It was caused by the
release ofmethylmercury in the
industrial wastewater from the Chisso Corporation's
chemical factory, which continued from 1932 to 1968.
• This highly toxic chemical bioaccumulated in shellfish
and fish in Minamata Bay, which, when eaten by the
local populace, resulted in mercury poisoning. While cat,
dog, pig, and human deaths continued for 36 years,

28. Minamata
• In the early 1970s, more than 10,000 persons in
Iraq were poisoned by eating bread baked from
mercury-polluted grain, and several thousand
people died as a consequence of the poisoning.
• However, the general population does not face
significant health risks from methyl mercury
exposure with the exception of certain groups
with high fish consumption.

29. Organic Mercury
• As of March 2001, 2,265 victims had been
officially recognised as having Minamata disease
(1,784 of whom had died)[2] and over 10,000 had
received financial compensation from Chisso