Waste waters in Iraq.

Waste waters in Iraq from agricultural farms, power stations, industrial factories, oil refineries, and research or hospital laboratories are currently a huge source of pollution to the already stretched drinking water systems of Iraq.⁸ However, if utilized appropriately, they can become a major potential resource. These waste waters contain a large number of biological and chemical pollutants that are hazardous and have a serious impact on human health.^910111213 Therefore, recycling techniques need to be developed that have the ability to remove these pollutants or reduce their level to an acceptable national/international standard as been adopted in 1970s where about 95% of the urban population and 75% of rural population gained safe potable water.¹⁴

The World Health Organization reports confirm that drinking and irrigation water in Iraq is of a very poor quality.⁸ The biological and chemical contaminants contained in the drinking water caused the incidence of 360,000 gastrointestinal infections during the first half of 2010. Moreover, the high salinity of surface waters (5000 parts per million) made these waters unsuitable for crop irrigation.¹⁴ Thus, any strategic plan should consider addressing the current deficiencies in the drinking and agricultural water supplies.

Determining the sources of water pollution in Iraq.

The first and most important step of any strategic plan should be to collect reliable data on the types and levels of all the pollutants in the waste and drinking waters. This important scientific task must be fulfilled as soon as possible using rigorous and reliable scientific protocols. A systematic study of current industrial and agricultural waste waters should establish the level of biological pollutants, chemical pollutants, and agricultural contaminants such as insecticides and fungicides. Many of these pollutants may be carcinogenic and/or teratogenic and mutagenic, and the extent of these potential effects on human health needs to be quantified using established biological methods such as short-term bioassays using bacteria as bio-indicators.^15,16

Animal carcinogenicity tests often take a significantly longer time and have a greater cost compared to bacterial bioassays. In addition, animal tests can only identify a very limited number of carcinogenic contaminants.^17,18 As an example, the determination of the carcinogenic potential of a single chemical using laboratory animals may take more than 3 years and can cost up to 250 million Iraqi Dinars (200,000 US dollars).¹⁵ Animal testing to determine the hundreds or thousands of potential environmental contaminants would be unfeasible, especially considering the urgency of the problems faced by Iraq. Therefore, efficient short-term biological assays using internationally certified methods to predict the environmental carcinogens as mutagens in bacterial strains should be the main technique employed for generating these data.^15161718

Here we must point out that the Ames test could be an ideal method; it has been used since the seventies and is still used in most parts of the world for predicting environmental carcinogens through the use of Salmonella strains that are specifically designed to detect multiple genetic mutations.¹⁸¹⁹²⁰ This relies on the specific design of a Salmonella strain that requires the amino acid histidine in its growth culture.¹⁸

This method has been implemented to examine more than 300 chemical substances known to be carcinogenic to mammalian cells and is established through thousands of research protocols conducted over four decades. The reported data show that about 90% of these carcinogens are mutagenic in Salmonella.^1718192021 For the remaining 10%, the fluctuation test that exposes bacteria to chemicals in a special aqueous solution or after the addition of a rat liver enzyme (S-9 enzymes) is also a useful assay.^21222324

The reported literature has described three axes for the screening of environmental carcinogens/mutagens in an aquatic environment:

This method can also be used to differentiate between pesticides harmful to human health and other safe contaminants. For example, this approach has also been used for the first time in the province of Kerbala, Iraq, to determine the length of stay of pesticides in some largely consumed vegetables such as cucumbers and tomatoes.³¹ In general, this technique can be considered as fast, cheap, and reliable to achieve a database of all the chemical pollutants that cause genetic mutations or cancer in the aquatic environment, as well as for identifying their input sources and to control their spread through aquatic environments.²⁹ This can be done through coordination between members of the chemical analysis research team and biologists using the short-term bioassays.²⁸ Building up such a database of carcinogens would be an important resource both for Iraq and for the scientific community.

Pathogenic bacteria in water.

Many types of microbes, especially pathogenic bacteria and viruses, are polluting the aquatic environments of Iraq leading to widespread public health problems. These microbial pollutants can arise from food factories, hospitals, university laboratories, and scientific research centers.^31,32 This is particularly a problem in the most rural areas where the population often drink water without chlorine disinfection.^32,33 One of the most serious problems resulting from microbial pollution of drinking water supplies is the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the drinking water resources³⁴³⁵³⁶ Polluted waste waters are lacking the necessary treatments in most Iraqi cities and villages and contribute to the issue of pathogen contamination of water systems. 63% of residential houses in Iraqi cities and 98% of residential houses in rural Iraqi villages lack disinfected water for drinking (Water Supply and Sanitation—Wikipedia, 2012).⁴ For instance, in Sulaymaniyah province in 2010, more than 1500 cases of cholera infection as well as 2000 cases of hepatitis viral infection were reported, and in eastern Baghdad's Sadr city, more than 360,000 cases of intestinal dysentery were reported in relation to the contamination of drinking water with sewage.³ These issues require quick and firm decisions in order to stop the threat to public health and halt the spread of diseases.^373839404142

A database of microbial contamination in the surface waters of the Iraqi environment needs to be created. This can then be used for the introduction of the latest scientific techniques such as diagnostics indicators of microbial contamination, which causes intestinal epidemics especially cholera, Salmonella, Shigella, and viral hepatitis.^{32,34,35,39,42}

However, it is very important to take into consideration that there may be some cases of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the drinking or recreation waters that may cause human diseases. This will also greatly aid in identifying the sources of pollution and dangerous pathogenic bacteria, in addition to the public health in a research environment.^{29,34,36,38,40,41,43,44}

A local based approach for waste water treatment at source.

Many technical procedures can be used for waste water treatment. One approach depends on small-scale biological treatment and filtering units that minimize environmental effects. These may be a useful way to implement waste water recycling at source before it enters the water systems at a relatively low cost. The main advantages of this technique are as follows:

Sterilizing water by UV, which does not adversely affect the environment.

We propose the following standards as a minimum baseline:

These small-scale fully automated systems with automatic sludge separation can be purchased commercially and delivered pre-assembled. The basic design of such units would include:

These processing units are the optimal way to treat contaminated water and use it to irrigate crops and public parks and at a relatively low cost. Compared to classical methods, the development of mobile bio-film expands the surface area of the biological treatment up to 950 square meters per cubic meter.