Urban effluent discharges as causes of public and environmental health concerns in South Africa’s aquatic milieu
Urban effluent discharges as causes of public and environmental health concerns in South Africa’s aquatic milieu
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DOI：
10.1007/s11356-015-5416-4
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发表时间：
2015-09
影响因子：
5.8
通讯作者：
T. Sibanda;R. Selvarajan;M. Tekere
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
T. Sibanda;R. Selvarajan;M. Tekere
由于废水排放量增加，南非河流系统的水质正在迅速恶化。河流和水库在沉积物中捕获有毒化学物质和营养物质的天然能力使这些系统能够积累污染物，改变环境水质的自然平衡，从而引起大量的公众和环境健康问题。水质受损与南非的一系列问题有关，包括鱼类大量死亡、生境模板改变导致河流大型无脊椎动物多样性减少、微生物群落结构发生变化，造成严重的生态后果，以及抗生素抗性基因的进化，在自然条件下，抗生素抗性基因可以转移到水传播的病原体。城市废水排放还与可食用植物部分中的金属生物累积增加、内分泌干扰化合物（EDC）浓度升高（这些化合物被认为导致生育力下降和癌症风险增加）、有毒蓝藻过度生长以及对人类构成潜在健康威胁的病原微生物浓度增加有关。然而，尽管废水排放会造成生态毒理学危害，但生态毒理学研究目前在南非水生生态系统评估中尚未得到充分利用，而且在进行这些评估的地方，观察到生态毒理学研究大多是实验性的，并且仅限于小型研究区域。仍需要更多的研究来充分评估特别是南非城市废水污染地表水的生态毒理学后果。本文综述了城市污水排放的影响，其中包括生活污水与工业污水和/或城市雨水径流的混合。
The water quality in South Africa’s river systems is rapidly deteriorating as a consequence of increased discharge of wastewater effluents. The natural ability of rivers and reservoirs to trap toxic chemicals and nutrients in their sediments enables these systems to accumulate contaminants, altering the natural balance in environmental water quality, thereby raising a plethora of public and environmental health concerns. Impaired water quality has been linked to an array of problems in South Africa including massive fish mortalities, altered habitat template leading to the thinning of riverine macroinvertebrate diversity, shifts in microbial community structures with drastic ecological consequences and evolvement of antibiotic resistance genes that, under natural conditions, can be transferred to waterborne pathogens. Urban wastewater discharge has also been implicated in increased bioaccumulation of metals in edible plant parts, elevated concentrations of endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs), which are blamed for reduced fertility and increased cancer risk, excessive growth of toxic cyanobacteria and an increase in concentrations of pathogenic microorganisms which constitute a potential health threat to humans. However, despite the ecotoxicological hazards posed by wastewater effluents, ecotoxicological studies are currently underutilised in South African aquatic ecosystem assessments, and where they have been done, the observation is that ecotoxicological studies are mostly experimental and restricted to small study areas. More research is still needed to fully assess especially the ecotoxicological consequences of surface water pollution by urban wastewater effluents in South Africa. A review of the effects of urban effluent discharges that include domestic effluent mixed with industrial effluent and/or urban stormwater run-off is hereby presented.