Here in the United States, keeping our streets clean is a hugely important task taken on by various types of street sweeper trucks and parking lot cleaners all throughout the country. After all, the absence of street sweeper trucks would leave a great deal of contaminants to fester in the streets. Not only would this be hugely detrimental to the aesthetic appeal of many of our streets, but it would end up being quite harmful the health of the residents in the area as well – therefore, street sweeper trucks and the typical street sweeping service play a hugely important role in life as we currently know it.
But in order to understand the true value of street sweeper trucks and road sweeping services, we must take a closer look at the contaminants and pollutants that end up on our roads in the first place. For one thing, run off pollution is a considerable problems, typically found on bigger roads and highways. Usually, this runoff pollution will contain various types of heavy metals as well as pesticides. When street sweeper trucks are not utilized on a regular basis, this runoff pollution can easily contaminate groundwater sources that are in the area. And as the vast majority of our drinking water is supplied by groundwater and groundwater alone, keeping our streets clean and mitigating the amount of runoff that happens is beneficial to each and every one of us living here in the United States.
But how does runoff happen in the first place? In places where snow or rainfall is common, runoff is likely to prove to be more of an issue. Without snow or rain, much of these aforementioned chemical contaminants would simply stay on the roads. However, runoff happens when melting snow or considerable rainfall washes them off and into the surrounding land, thus causing the problems that have also been mentioned above. In places where snow or rain (or both, as a matter of fact) is particularly common, the need for the regular use of street sweeper trucks is likely to be much more pronounced, to say the least.
And there are certainly a wide array of pollutants that can end up on the typical roads in so many parts of the United States. Oil and grease, along with other toxic chemicals emitted by cars, can typically be found on just about any road, but higher concentrations of them are likely in some of the more urban areas throughout this country. And along with pesticides, nutrients meant for plants and the like can also end up on roads, thanks to the industries surrounding gardening as well as turf management, which has become more necessary in the last few years. Finally, septic systems have also provided their own set of contaminants to roads.
This can become more and more of a problem here in the United States, especially as the septic systems of this country continue to age and decay and become less and less reliable. These septic systems are failing at a higher rate than ever before, and this can have a profound consequence on the health of the communities in which these failing septic systems actually exist. After all, failing septic systems can leave a wide array of different kinds of viruses and bacteria on the roads, meaning that those who live around them and are susceptible to the runoff of these roads will more likely than not come into contact with them if street sweeper trucks are not regularly utilized.
And street sweeper trucks can even do more than clean up these microscopic pollutants – they can also handle forms of debris that are considerably larger as well. This type of debris, much larger and more visible to the eye, tends to encompass everything from leaves to paper, debris that, if left unchecked, could all too easily begin to block storm sewers, something that could easily become catastrophic without the aid of street sweeper trucks being used on a regular basis.