Water is an essential resource required for various human activities such as drinking, cooking, and other recreational activities. While developed nations have made significant improvement in providing adequate quality water and sanitation devoid of virus contaminations to a significant percentage of the residences, many of the developing countries are still lacking in these regards, leading to many death cases among the vulnerable due to ingestion of virus-contaminated water and other waterborne pathogens. However, the recent global pandemic of COVID-19 seems to have changed the paradigm by reawakening the importance of water quality and sanitation, and focusing more attention on the pervasive effect of the use of virus-contaminated water as it can be a potential driver for the spread of the virus and other waterborne diseases, especially in developing nations that are characterized by low socioeconomic development. Therefore, this review assessed the socioeconomic inequalities related to the usage of virus-contaminated water and other waterborne pathogens in developing countries. The socioeconomic factors attributed to the various waterborne diseases due to the use of virus-contaminated water in many developing countries are poverty, the standard of living, access to health care facilities, age, gender, and level of education. Some mitigation strategies to address the viral contamination of water sources are therefore proposed, while future scope and recommendations on tackling the essential issues related to socioeconomic inequality in developing nations are highlighted.

Rainfall-runoff is the active agent of soil erosion which often resulted in land degradation and water quality deterioration. Its aggressiveness to induce erosion is usually termed as rainfall erosivity index or factor (R). R-factor is one of the factors to be parameterized in the evaluation of soil loss using the Universal Soil Loss Equation and its reversed versions (USLE/RUSLE). The computation of accurate R-factor for a particular watershed requires high temporal resolution rainfall (pluviograph) data with less than 30-minutes intensities for at least 20 yrs, which is available only in a few regions of the world. As a result, various simplified models have been proposed by researchers to evaluate R-factor using readily available daily, monthly or annual precipitation data. This study is thus aimed at estimating R-factor and to establish an approximate relationship between R-factor and rainfall for subsequent usage in the estimation of soil loss in Cameron highlands watershed. The results of the analysis showed that the least and peak (critical) R-factors occurred in the months of January and April with 660.82 and 2399.18 MJ mm ha -1 h -1 year -1 respectively. Also, it was observed that erosivity power starts to increase from the month of January through April before started falling in the month of July. The monthly and annual peaks (critical periods) may be attributed to increased rainfall amount due to climate change which in turn resulted to increased aggressiveness of rains to cause erosion in the study area. The correlation coefficient of 0.985 showed that there was a strong relationship rainfall and R-factor.

This study investigated the potential of Moringa oleifera (MO) seed biomass as a coagulant for the removal of turbidity, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and chemical oxygen demand (COD) of municipal wastewater. Triplicated laboratory experiments using MO coagulant added at varying treatment dosages of 50, 100, 150, 200 mg/L, and a control (0 mg/L) treatment were performed for a settling period of 250 min at room temperature. Kinetics and prediction variables of cumulative turbidity, BOD, and COD removal were estimated using simplified first order and modified Gompertz models. Results showed that the maximum removal of turbidity, BOD, and COD were 94.44%, 68.72%, and 57.61%, respectively, using an MO dose of 150 mg/L. Various kinetic parameters, such as rate constant (r), measured (REm) versus predicted (REp) cumulative removal, and specific pollutant removal rate (µm), were also maximum when an MO dose of 150 mg/L was added, the standard error being below 5%. The developed models were successfully validated over multiple observations. This study suggests low cost and sustainable removal of turbidity, BOD, and COD of municipal wastewater using MO seed biomass as a coagulant.

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