Avaliação das condições de saneamento rural e dos respectivos impactos ambientais no município de Pombal - PB.

Abstract

Several human activities have the potential to cause adverse environmental impact, among them those related to inadequate or deficient sanitation services. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines sanitation as the control or management of the physical factors that may cause harmful effects to man, depreciating their physical, mental and social well -being. Therefore, this study aimed to perform a diagnosis of the rural sanitation in the municipality of Pombal -PB and their environmental impacts and to propose measures for environmental control. For the diagnosis of rural sanitation interviews with various public officials responsible for public health services in the county and visits more critical in rural communities were performed, the environmental impacts were identified by the methods of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), ad- Hoc and Checklist cited in the literature. Based on the results obtained, it was possible to realize a significant concern for rural sanitation, given that the current reality of rural sanitation in the municipality presented disturbing findings in all aspects covered. The poor condition of final disposal of solid waste and sewage also make up a set of negative impacts to the environment and people's health. Other disturbing data were registered to the occurrence of diseases such as diarrhea, dengue, Chagas disease, and others, which are clearly correlated with poor sanitation presented by the communities. The research allowed to identify 22 negative impacts. To settle these problems some mitigation measures have been proposed, among them, adopting simple technologies for the treatment of water, sewage, solid waste and vector control.