Nitrates are the most common chemical pollutant of groundwater in agricultural and suburban areas. Croatia must comply with the Nitrate Directive (91/676/EEC) whose aim is to reduce water pollution by nitrates originating from agriculture and to prevent further pollution. Podravina and Prigorje are the areas with a relatively high degree of agricultural activity. Therefore, the aim of this stud...

This inequality is especially critical for Asia, which has 60% of the world’s population but only 36% of the world’s water. Water quality in terms of pollutant loading also is not distributed equally and is related to the type of use and a country’s level of development (Figure 2). Developing countries often have less capacity to improve water quality and depend on lower-quality water for a var...

Expansion of urban populations, increased coverage of domestic water supply and sewerage give rise to greater quantities of municipal wastewater. With the current emphasis on environmental health and water pollution issues, there is an increasing discharge of waste water in developing countries. Present technologies in developing countries for treating waste water are not sufficient and cost ef...

Watersheds are recognized as the most effective management unit for the protection of water resources. For surface water supplies that use water from upstream watersheds, evaluating threats to water quality and implementing a watershed management plan are crucial for the maintenance of drinking water safe for humans. The aim of this article is to establish a risk assessment model that provides ...

High-molecular weight (> C16) hydrocarbons (HMWHs) are common pollutants in sediments of freshwater systems, particularly urban water bodies. No sediment quality guidelines exist for total hydrocarbons; more emphasis is placed on polyaromatic hydrocarbons, the most toxic component of hydrocarbons. A field-based microcosm experiment was conducted to determine whether unpolluted sediments spiked ...

Very few regions of the planet possess abundant fresh water and access to adequate fresh water resources can be expected to worsen as a result of population growth and industrial demands for water. Liquid effluents containing toxic substances are generated by a variety of chemistry-related industrial processes, as well as by a number of common household or agricultural applications. The inadequ...

A great challenge today is conciliation of water resources utilization with the expansion of cities and human activities. Considering that the water quality of a given water body is necessarily evaluated through the analysis of some biological, physical and chemical parameters, mathematical and computational models able to describe the behavior of such parameters can be an useful tool, given th...