Ancient Egyptians had its own share of plagues. But those that had come to them did not last. The modern world has vicious and more dangerous ones. Mankind is fast losing rivers, lakes and oceans to harmful chemicals. Some rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans are now saturated with chemicals beyond the upper limits recommended by World Health Organization. They are saturated with chemicals like Zinc, Copper, Lead, Cadmium and Mercury from industries. And raw or poorly treated sewage have also found their way into rivers.

Mr. Henry Ndede, a programme coordinator at UNEP, while commenting on the clean-up exercise of Nairobi River and its basin, said that it would be difficult to clean up the river to the extent that their water would be used for drinking. He said that cleaning may reclaim the rivers for recreation, car washing and fire fighting purposes.

No more water for drinking, cooking, bathing, washing, and irrigation!

Nairobi river and its basin flows through the city of Nairobi before joining another river to form Athi River, which flows through some rather dry land occupied by pastoralists and farmers before reaching Indian Ocean. People downstream use the water and no one is sounding an alarm. They use the water for their domestic needs, to graze their livestock and for irrigation. The livestock and the crops are food for the farmers and other people in Kenya and around the world, yet they may have traces of chemicals. If Nairobi River and its basins carry chemicals way above World Health Organization safety levels, then the river down-stream upto Indian-Ocean is not safe. So to other rivers. Other sources of chemicals in water bodies come from toxic chemicals carried and dumped near water, oil spills, ship scrapping, and nuclear testing, and chemical accidents.

Though many third world countries have signed and ratified UN laws concerning chemicals and the environment, and are busy coming up with rigorous regulations and trying to implement them, they are finding it difficult.

With lack of technology, which is still prohibitively expensive, a still rampant lack of environmental consciousness, and the fact that these countries are still struggling for bare survival, implementation of environmental legislations have been very difficult. Third world countries need support from the developed countries that may not be willing to spend so much of their tax payer’s money even in their own countries on cleaner production technologies. Some of the first world countries are instead worsening situations in some third world countries.

Despite Basel convention, and intergovernmental UN treaty on handling of toxic chemicals banning damping of chemicals in the third world, dumping continue to happen. Basel Action Network (BAN), a Seattle based toxic trade watchdog have stated that some first world countries are involved in notorious schemes which allowed the export of hazardous wastes to some of the poorest countries on earth. BAN gave an example of dumping of toxic incinerator ash by sea side in Haiti, shipping of hazardous waste materials as fertilizers to Bangladesh by Stoller Chemical Company and ship scrapping of ships in India that exposes shipscrapping workers to dangerous PCBs and Asbestos.

The chemicals in Haiti ash dump, Bangladesh hazardous waste materials, PCB, and Asbestos from shipscrapping in India obviously found their way into water, pausing danger to humans, plants and animals. According to BAN and scientific knowledge, Cadmium and Lead present in the ash is known to contribute to neurological damage, lung and bone disorders, birth defects and other health problems. The hazardous waste materials shipped to Bangladesh also contained hazardous levels of lead and Cadmium. And to make the situation even worse, third world countries are producing relatively low chemical wastes, yet they are unable to prevent them from finding their way into water. If toxic chemicals from developed countries are dumped in the third world countries, third world countries would just grumble.