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Water Pollution

Overview

Water pollution is contamination of water by foreign matter that deteriorates the quality of the water. Water pollution covers pollutions in liquid forms like ocean pollution and river pollution. As the term applies, liquid pollution occurs in the oceans, lakes, streams, rivers, underground water and bays, in short liquid-containing areas. It involves the release of toxic substances, pathogenic germs, substances that require much oxygen to decompose, easy-soluble substances, radioactivity, etc. that become deposited upon the bottom and their accumulations will interfere with the condition of aquatic ecosystems. For example, the eutrophication: lack of oxygen in a water body caused by excessive algae growths because of enrichment of pollutants.

Water Cycle and Pollution

Water cycle is, simply saying, the circulation of water in earth. In fact, the water in the earth's biosphere is used and reused again and again. This is called water cycle or continuous movement of water between the earth and the atmosphere. It involves the following mechanisms:

  • Evaporation: changing of water from liquid to gas

  • Transpiration: Release of water vapor from plant leaves

  • Condensation: changing of vapor to liquid (cooled down)

  • Precipitation: Water that returns to the earth (water droplets in clouds become large enough and there comes the rain).

What's the relation of water cycle and pollution? 

According to the water cycle, naturally, water around us will be absorbed to the land (soil) and rivers will stream from the upstream to the downstream and released to the sea.  In normal situation organic pollutants are biodegraded by microbes and converted to a form that brings benefits to the aquatic life. And for the inorganic pollutants, in the same situation, don't bring to much hazards because they are widely dispersed and have almost no effect to the environment which they are released to.

In a small scale, both inorganic and organic pollutants safely decompose throughout the stream, their concentration decrease in the sea, and they don't harm the sea ecosystem and its distribution. But in an excessive scale, communities in beach and estuary will be affected by the pollutants, and can heavily harm them.  

Sources and Methods

We can classify major sources that lead to water pollution to the following categories:

  • petroleum products

  • synthetic agricultural chemicals

  • heavy metals

  • hazardous wastes

  • excess organic matter

  • sediment

  • infectious organisms

  • air pollution

  • thermal pollution

  • soil pollution 

Source : http://library.thinkquest.org

Pollution


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All efforts have been made to make the information as accurate as possible, Chhattisgarh Environment Conservation Board, will not be responsible for any loss to any person caused by inaccuracy in the information available on this Website. Any discrepancy found may be brought to the notice of Chhattisgarh Environment Conservation Board.