Solution:
Treatment of water is done by the heterotrophic microbes naturally present in sewage. BOD refers to the amount of the oxygen that would be consumed if all the organic matter in one liter of water were oxidised by bacteria. The BOD test measures the
rate of uptake of oxygen by micro-organisms in a sample of water and thus, indirectly, BOD is a measure of the organic matter present in the water. The greater the BOD of waste water, more is its polluting potential.
