I need just one suggestion for each pollutant. I don’t know what to put. I would appreciate it. Thank you.
pathogens, organic matter, organic chemicals, inorganic chemicals, heavy metals, and physical agents.
Comprising over 70% of the Earths surface, water is undoubtedly the most precious natural resource that exists on our planet. Without the seemingly invaluable compound comprised of hydrogen and oxygen, life on Earth would be non-existent: it is essential for everything on our planet to grow and prosper. Although we as humans recognize this fact, we disregard it by polluting our rivers, lakes, and oceans. Subsequently, we are slowly but surely harming our planet to the point where organisms
are dying at a very alarming rate. In addition to innocent organisms dying off, our drinking water has become greatly affected as is our ability to use water for recreational purposes. In order to combat water pollution, we must understand the problems and become part of the solution.
CAUSES OF POLLUTION
Many causes of pollution including sewage and fertilizers contain nutrients such as nitrates and phosphates. In excess levels, nutrients over stimulate the growth of aquatic plants and algae. Excessive growth of these types of organisms consequently clogs our waterways, use up dissolved oxygen as they decompose, and block light to deeper waters.
This, in turn, proves very harmful to aquatic organisms as it affects the respiration ability or fish and other invertebrates that reside in water.
Pollution is also caused when silt and other suspended solids, such as soil, washoff plowed fields, construction and logging sites, urban areas, and eroded river banks when it rains. Under natural conditions, lakes, rivers, and other water bodies undergo Eutrophication, an aging process that slowly fills in the water body with sediment and organic matter. When these sediments enter various bodies of water, fish respirationbecomes impaired, plant productivity and water depth become reduced, and aquatic organisms and their environments become suffocated. Pollution in the form of organic
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/image6N8.JPG
ADDITIONAL FORMS OF WATER POLLUTION
Three last forms of water pollution exist in the forms of petroleum, radioactive substances, and heat. Petroleum often pollutes waterbodies in the form of oil, resulting from oil spills. The previously mentioned Exxon Valdez is an example of this type of water pollution. These large-scale accidental discharges of petroleum are an important cause of pollution along shore lines. Besides the supertankers, off-shore drilling operations contribute a large share of pollution. One estimate is that one ton of oil is spilled for every million tons of oil transported. This is equal to about 0.0001 percent. Radioactive substances are produced in the form of waste from nuclear power plants, and from the industrial, medical, and scientific use of radioactive materials. Specific forms of waste are uranium and thorium mining and refining. The last form of water pollution is heat. Heat is a pollutant because increased temperatures result in the deaths of many aquatic organisms. These decreases in temperatures are caused when a discharge of cooling water by factories and power plants occurs.
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/pic5.gif
Demonstrators Protest Drilling
Oil pollution is a growing problem, particularly devestating to coastal wildlife. Small quantities of oil spread rapidly across long distances to form deadly oil slicks. In this picture, demonstrators with "oil-covered" plastic animals protest a potential drilling project in Key Largo, Florida. Whether or not accidental spills occur during the project, its impact on the delicate marine ecosystem of the coral reefs could be devastating.
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/imageKUS.JPG
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/image5BI.JPG
Oil Spill Clean-up
Workers use special nets to clean up a California beach after an oil tanker spill. Tanker spills are an increasing environmental problem because once oil has spilled, it is virtually impossible to completely remove or contain it. Even small amounts spread rapidly across large areas of water. Because oil and water do not mix, the oil floats on the water and then washes up on broad expanses of shoreline. Attempts to chemically treat or sink the oil may further disrupt marine and beach ecosystems.
CLASSIFYING WATER POLLUTION
The major sources of water pollution can be classified as municipal, industrial, and agricultural. Municipal water pollution consists of waste water from homes and commercial establishments. For many years, the main goal of treating municipal
wastewater was simply to reduce its content of suspended solids, oxygen-demanding materials, dissolved inorganic compounds, and harmful bacteria. In recent years, however, more stress has been placed on improving means of disposal of the solid residues from the municipal treatment processes. The basic methods of treating municipal wastewater fall into three stages: primary treatment, including grit removal, screening, grinding, and sedimentation; secondary treatm
April 30th, 2010 at 5:57 am
Simple… Make everyone take their water downstream from where they dump their effluvium.
References :
April 30th, 2010 at 6:29 am
Comprising over 70% of the Earths surface, water is undoubtedly the most precious natural resource that exists on our planet. Without the seemingly invaluable compound comprised of hydrogen and oxygen, life on Earth would be non-existent: it is essential for everything on our planet to grow and prosper. Although we as humans recognize this fact, we disregard it by polluting our rivers, lakes, and oceans. Subsequently, we are slowly but surely harming our planet to the point where organisms
are dying at a very alarming rate. In addition to innocent organisms dying off, our drinking water has become greatly affected as is our ability to use water for recreational purposes. In order to combat water pollution, we must understand the problems and become part of the solution.
CAUSES OF POLLUTION
Many causes of pollution including sewage and fertilizers contain nutrients such as nitrates and phosphates. In excess levels, nutrients over stimulate the growth of aquatic plants and algae. Excessive growth of these types of organisms consequently clogs our waterways, use up dissolved oxygen as they decompose, and block light to deeper waters.
This, in turn, proves very harmful to aquatic organisms as it affects the respiration ability or fish and other invertebrates that reside in water.
Pollution is also caused when silt and other suspended solids, such as soil, washoff plowed fields, construction and logging sites, urban areas, and eroded river banks when it rains. Under natural conditions, lakes, rivers, and other water bodies undergo Eutrophication, an aging process that slowly fills in the water body with sediment and organic matter. When these sediments enter various bodies of water, fish respirationbecomes impaired, plant productivity and water depth become reduced, and aquatic organisms and their environments become suffocated. Pollution in the form of organic
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/image6N8.JPG
ADDITIONAL FORMS OF WATER POLLUTION
Three last forms of water pollution exist in the forms of petroleum, radioactive substances, and heat. Petroleum often pollutes waterbodies in the form of oil, resulting from oil spills. The previously mentioned Exxon Valdez is an example of this type of water pollution. These large-scale accidental discharges of petroleum are an important cause of pollution along shore lines. Besides the supertankers, off-shore drilling operations contribute a large share of pollution. One estimate is that one ton of oil is spilled for every million tons of oil transported. This is equal to about 0.0001 percent. Radioactive substances are produced in the form of waste from nuclear power plants, and from the industrial, medical, and scientific use of radioactive materials. Specific forms of waste are uranium and thorium mining and refining. The last form of water pollution is heat. Heat is a pollutant because increased temperatures result in the deaths of many aquatic organisms. These decreases in temperatures are caused when a discharge of cooling water by factories and power plants occurs.
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/pic5.gif
Demonstrators Protest Drilling
Oil pollution is a growing problem, particularly devestating to coastal wildlife. Small quantities of oil spread rapidly across long distances to form deadly oil slicks. In this picture, demonstrators with "oil-covered" plastic animals protest a potential drilling project in Key Largo, Florida. Whether or not accidental spills occur during the project, its impact on the delicate marine ecosystem of the coral reefs could be devastating.
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/imageKUS.JPG
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/image5BI.JPG
Oil Spill Clean-up
Workers use special nets to clean up a California beach after an oil tanker spill. Tanker spills are an increasing environmental problem because once oil has spilled, it is virtually impossible to completely remove or contain it. Even small amounts spread rapidly across large areas of water. Because oil and water do not mix, the oil floats on the water and then washes up on broad expanses of shoreline. Attempts to chemically treat or sink the oil may further disrupt marine and beach ecosystems.
CLASSIFYING WATER POLLUTION
The major sources of water pollution can be classified as municipal, industrial, and agricultural. Municipal water pollution consists of waste water from homes and commercial establishments. For many years, the main goal of treating municipal
wastewater was simply to reduce its content of suspended solids, oxygen-demanding materials, dissolved inorganic compounds, and harmful bacteria. In recent years, however, more stress has been placed on improving means of disposal of the solid residues from the municipal treatment processes. The basic methods of treating municipal wastewater fall into three stages: primary treatment, including grit removal, screening, grinding, and sedimentation; secondary treatm
References :
WATER POLLUTION AND SOCIETY
By
David Krantz and Brad Kifferstein
April 30th, 2010 at 7:09 am
ver two thirds of Earth’s surface is covered by water; less than a third is taken up by land. As Earth’s population continues to grow, people are putting ever-increasing pressure on the planet’s water resources. In a sense, our oceans, rivers, and other inland waters are being "squeezed" by human activities—not so they take up less room, but so their quality is reduced. Poorer water quality means water pollution.
We know that pollution is a human problem because it is a relatively recent development in the planet’s history: before the 19th century Industrial Revolution, people lived more in harmony with their immediate environment. As industrialisation has spread around the globe, so the problem of pollution has spread with it. When Earth’s population was much smaller, no one believed pollution would ever present a serious problem. It was once popularly believed that the oceans were far too big to pollute. Today, with over 8 billion people on the planet, it has become apparent that there are limits. Pollution is one of the signs that humans have exceeded those limits.
How serious is the problem? According to the environmental campaign organization WWF: "Pollution from toxic chemicals threatens life on this planet. Every ocean and every continent, from the tropics to the once-pristine polar regions, is contaminated."
What is water pollution?
Water pollution can be defined in many ways. Usually, it means one or more substances have built up in water to such an extent that they cause problems for animals or people. Oceans, lakes, rivers, and other inland waters can naturally clean up a certain amount of pollution by dispersing it harmlessly. If you poured a cup of black ink into a river, the ink would quickly disappear into the river’s much larger volume of clean water. The ink would still be there in the river, but in such a low concentration that you would not be able to see it. At such low levels, the chemicals in the ink probably would not present any real problem. However, if you poured gallons of ink into a river every few seconds through a pipe, the river would quickly turn black. The chemicals in the ink could very quickly have an effect on the quality of the water. This, in turn, could affect the health of all the plants, animals, and humans whose lives depend on the river.
Thus, water pollution is all about quantities: how much of a polluting substance is released and how big a volume of water it is released into. A small quantity of a toxic chemical may have little impact if it is spilled into the ocean from a ship. But the same amount of the same chemical can have a much bigger impact pumped into a lake or river, where there is less clean water to disperse it.
Water pollution almost always means that some damage has been done to an ocean, river, lake, or other water source. A 1971 United Nations report defined ocean pollution as:
"The introduction by man, directly or indirectly, of substances or energy into the marine environment (including estuaries) resulting in such deleterious effects as harm to living resources, hazards to human health, hinderance to marine activities, including fishing, impairment of quality for use of sea water and reduction of amenities."
Fortunately, Earth is forgiving and damage from water pollution is often reversible.
What are the main types of water pollution?
When we think of Earth’s water resources, we think of huge oceans, lakes, and rivers. Water resources like these are called surface waters. The most obvious type of water pollution affects surface waters. For example, a spill from an oil tanker creates an oil slick that can affect a vast area of the ocean.
Surface waters and groundwater are the two types of water resources that pollution affects. There are also two different ways in which pollution can occur. If pollution comes from a single location, such as a discharge pipe attached to a factory, it is known as point-source pollution. Other examples of point source pollution include an oil spill from a tanker, a discharge from a smoke stack (factory chimney), or someone pouring oil from their car down a drain. A great deal of water pollution happens not from one single source but from many different scattered sources. This is called nonpoint-source pollutionWhen point-source pollution enters the environment, the place most affected is usually the area immediately around the source. For example, when a tanker accident occurs, the oil slick is concentrated around the tanker itself and, in the right ocean conditions, the pollution disperses the further away from the tanker you go. This is less likely to happen with nonpoint source pollution which, by definition, enters the environment from many different places at once.
Some forms of water pollution are very obvious: everyone has seen TV news footage of oil slicks filmed from helicopters flying overhead. Water pollution is usually less obvious and much harder to detect than this. But
References :
water pollution