Sewage Sludge Essay

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The accruing benefits from sludge recycling generated from sewage treatment of municipal wastewater cannot be neglected as this sewage sludge has become a subject of research in different fields in recent years. A growing number of environmentalist scientists are becoming interestingly alarmed over the importance of sewage sludge recycling which is of great concern for environmental and economic reasons.
Increased population, a consequence of economic development and rapid urbanization has led to production of huge amounts of sewage sludge around the word, which lead to considerable stresses on environmental and accumulation various kinds of biological and chemical pollutants, especially on soils (Adriano, 2013).
Sewage sludge has been used as an amendment to soil improvement conditions. The application of sewage sludge to tropical soils is one of the proposed methods of maintaining soil characteristics. It is also an alternative for disposing of waste products. Sewage sludge has the potential to enhance soil productivity because it contains high organic matters and plant nutrients. Malaysian domestic sewage sludge is acidic in nature and it has variable chemical composition (nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), calcium (Ca), potassium (K) and magnesium (Mg)) and heavy metals with higher concentration rates in zinc (Zn) and copper (Cu). …show more content…

However, heavy metal on soils has been increased due to applying sewage sludge and possibly will represent risk to humans, animals and plants (Bondarczuk et al., 2016). The most heavy metals commonly found in sewage sludge are zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), and nickel (Ni) and cadmium (Cd). Zinc and Cu must be carefully checked and controlled because when the sewage sludge is applied to soil, a huge volume of these elements are produced might reach the plants

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