Analysis of organic nitrogen compound in domestic sewage in Yamato River using a social experimental test

Abstract

A social experimental test to reduce the amount of organic pollutant from households was performed along the Yamato River in Japan. The river is polluted with organic compounds in sewage and has the highest biological oxygen demand (BOD) of all rivers managed by Japanese government. Because of this, the government carried out a cleaning campaign to improve the water quality in the Yamato River between 1985 and 2005 by constructing river purification facilities and sewerage systems. We evaluated these efforts of the sewage systems and the river water cleaning campaign by measuring the change in the amount o f nitrogen compounds and by pollutant load analysis.