Problems concerning water sanitation stem from the rise in urban migration and the practice of discharging untreated wastewater. The uncontrolled growth in urban areas has made planning and expansion of water and sewage systems very difficult and expensive to carry out. In addition, many of those moving to the city have low incomes, making it difficult to pay for any water system upgrades.
In developing countries, 300 million urban residents have no access to sanitation and it is mainly low-income urban dwellers who are affected by lack of sanitation infrastructure. Approximately two-thirds of the population in the developing world has no hygienic means of disposing excreta and an even greater number lack adequate means of disposing of total wastewater.
It is a common practice to discharge untreated sewage directly into bodies of water or put onto agricultural land, causing significant health and economic risks. The effects of inadequate treatment can be detrimental to a community on economic, cultural and health-levels. The costs of poorly managed domestic waste are very high.
Water contaminated by human, chemical or industrial wastes can cause a number of diseases through ingestion or physical contact. Water-related diseases include dengue, filariasis, malaria, onchocerciasis, trypanosomiasis and yellow fever. Consequently, no other type of intervention has greater impact upon a country’s development and public health than the condition of clean drinking water and the appropriate disposal of human waste.
Natural plant extracts have been used for water purification for many centuries. Most of these extracts are derived from the seeds, leaves, pieces of bark or sap, roots and fruit extracts of trees and plants. The use of natural plant extracts has been, over time, adopted in many rural communities of developing countries for water clarification methods like flocculation, coagulation and sedimentation. Therefore, this experimental study is conducted to assess the potential of natural coagulants and disinfectants in turbidity and microbial load reduction.
