Water pollution is a serious problem in the United States and around the world. Due to contamination, over 40% of the country’s rivers and nearly half the lakes are too polluted to support aquatic life. Fishing and swimming are also banned in these bodies of water due to pollution. Every year, over one trillion gallons of sewage and other contaminants enter American waters.
The problem is even worse in other areas of the world. In Asia, most rivers contain bacteria levels that are twenty times higher than those in Western Europe and the United States. These high levels are due to an excess of human waste in the rivers. Every year, more than 250 million people die due to water-related diseases like dysentery, typhoid, cholera and schistosomiasis.
Water becomes polluted when contaminants reach a water source either directly or indirectly through transportation or environmental changes. No matter how pollutants reach water, they can cause serious health and environmental damages.
The following list explains some of the most common causes of water pollution today.
Pesticides
Farmers often apply chemical-based pesticides to their fields in an effort to keep insects at bay and protect their crops. Homeowners use pesticides as well to ensure that their grass keeps coming back green year after year. The unintended consequence of this is often water pollution, as the pesticides run into local water sources or drain into groundwater. In the central United States, taxpayers spend nearly $400 million dollars annually to filter water and rid it of just one pesticide called Atrazine.Oil and
Gasoline
These fuels are a common cause of many types of water pollution. Major oil spills always attract a lot of media attention, but oil pollution occurs far more often than major spills. Every day, oil and petroleum are carried by rainwater runoff to bodies of water. Some of this oil comes from minor spills at gas stations, leaking automobiles and spills at industrial plants. This amount of contamination may seem small, but it really builds up. Each year, these minor sources combine to pollute water sources with five times the contaminants as a single major oil spill. Our water is further contaminated by drilling for oil and gas extraction.
Industrial Pollution
Chemicals and industrial waste are a major cause of water pollution. Over 30 billion liters of hazardous chemical waste enters American waters each year, contaminating the water supply and causing environmental degradation. In India, groundwater in every major industrial area is too contaminated to drink due to this cause of water pollution.
Household Products
Water pollution at home is serious and easily overlooked. Many of the chemicals and solutions we use to clean our homes, brush our teeth, do laundry, shower and more goes straight down the drain and into bodies of water. Prescription drugs, bleach, soaps, shampoo and other products all contain contaminants that can have a serious effect on drinking water. Most treatment centers are not able to filter out the chemicals in these products.Sewage
This cause of water pollution has a tremendous effect on water, especially in the developing world, where almost all waste water goes directly into bodies of water without being treated. In the United States, septic tank runoff is a large cause of water pollution. This pollution can be prevented by pumping your septic system regularly, doing annual inspections and avoiding the use of additives in your system.
Plastic
Americans purchase more than 29 billion bottles of water every year, and only one-sixth of those bottles are recycled. The rest end up in landfills or are left as litter and eventually make it into the country’s bodies of water. It takes hundreds of years for just one plastic water bottle to disintegrate. Marine animals that consume plastic eventually die and decompose, but the plastic remains and can contaminate for many generations to come. Additional contamination comes from other plastic products like fishing nets and packaging.
Marine Dumping
Dumping trash into bodies of water is one of the major causes of water pollution and endangers sea life. Plastic can last for 400 years or more before degrading, styrofoam takes 80 years, aluminum takes 200 years and glass takes longer to decompose than all the other products combined. Where marine dumping is concerned, today’s trash is more than tomorrow’s pollution; it will continue to contaminate water sources for hundreds of years.