{"id":2667,"date":"2021-04-19T12:41:41","date_gmt":"2021-04-19T12:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vardhmanenvirotech.com\/?p=2667"},"modified":"2023-10-18T04:07:10","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T04:07:10","slug":"things-to-know-about-pollution-of-water-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vardhmanenvirotech.com\/blog\/things-to-know-about-pollution-of-water-sources\/","title":{"rendered":"Things to know about Pollution of Water Sources"},"content":{"rendered":"

British poet\u00a0W. H. Auden\u00a0once noted, <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThousands have lived without love, not one without water.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our rivers, reservoirs, lakes, and seas are drowning in chemicals, waste, plastic, and other pollutants. Yet while we all know water is crucial for life, we trash it anyway. Some\u00a080 percent of the world\u2019s wastewater\u00a0is dumped\u2014largely untreated\u2014back into the environment, polluting rivers, lakes, and oceans.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

This widespread problem of water pollution is jeopardizing our health. Unsafe water\u00a0kills more people\u00a0each year than war and all other forms of violence combined. Meanwhile, our drinkable water sources are finite:\u00a0Less than 1 percent\u00a0of the Earth\u2019s freshwater is actually accessible to us. Without action, the challenges will only increase by 2050, when global demand for freshwater is expected to be\u00a0one-third greater\u00a0than it is now.<\/p>\n

Sip a glass of cool, clear water as you read this, and you may think water pollution is a problem. Somewhere else. But while\u00a0those who have access to safe drinking wate<\/a>r, potentially harmful contaminants\u2014from arsenic to copper to lead\u2014have been found in the tap water of most Taps across the world.Still, we\u2019re not hopeless against the threat to clean water.<\/p>\n

Water Pollution<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Water pollution is mixing of harmful things, chemicals or bacterial substances etc. contaminating through the sources like\u00a0 rivers, lakes, streams, ocean, aquifer, or other body of water, deteriorating water quality and to an extent of being toxic for plants, humans and the environment.<\/p>\n

Causes of Water Pollution?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Water is uniquely vulnerable to pollution. Known as a \u201cuniversal solvent,\u201d water is able to dissolve more substances than any other liquid on earth. It\u2019s the reason we have Kool-Aid and brilliant blue waterfalls. It\u2019s also why water is so easily polluted. Toxic substances from farms, towns, and factories readily dissolve into and mix with it, causing water pollution.<\/p>\n

Water Pollution of various water sources:<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Surface water:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Covering about\u00a070 percent of the earth, surface water is what fills our oceans, lakes, rivers, and all those other blue bits on the world map. Surface water from freshwater sources (that is, from sources other than the ocean) accounts for\u00a0more than 60 percent\u00a0of the water delivered to homes. But a significant pool of that water is in peril. According to the most recent surveys on national water quality from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,\u00a0narly half of our rivers and streams\u00a0and\u00a0more than one-third of our lakes\u00a0aere polluted and unfit for swimming, fishing, and drinking.\u00a0Nutrient pollution, which includes nitrates and phosphates, is the leading type of contamination in these freshwater sources. While plants and animals need these nutrients to grow, they have become a\u00a0major pollutant\u00a0due to farm waste and fertilizer runoff. Municipal and industrial waste discharges contribute their fair share of toxins as well. There\u2019s also all the random junk that industry and individuals dump directly into waterways.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Groundwater:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

When rain falls and seeps deep into the earth, filling the cracks, crevices, and porous spaces of an aquifer (basically an underground storehouse of water), it becomes groundwater\u2014one of our least visible but most important natural resources.\u00a0Nearly 80 percent of Indian\u2019s rely on groundwater, pumped to the earth\u2019s surface, for domestic, agriculture and industrialneed. For rural India, it\u2019s the only freshwater source. Groundwater gets polluted when contaminants\u2014from pesticides and fertilizers to waste leached from landfills and septic systems\u2014make their way into an aquifer, rendering it unsafe for human use. Ridding groundwater of contaminants can be difficult to impossible, as well as costly. Once polluted, an aquifer may be unusable for decades, or even thousands of years. Groundwater can also spread contamination far from the original polluting source as it seeps into streams, lakes, and oceans.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ocean water:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Eighty percent\u00a0of\u00a0ocean pollution\u00a0(also called marine pollution) originates on land\u2014whether along the coast or far inland. Contaminants such as chemicals, nutrients, and heavy metals are carried from farms, factories, and cities by streams and rivers into our bays and estuaries; from there they travel out to sea. Meanwhile, marine debris\u2014particularly plastic\u2014is blown in by the wind or washed in via storm drains and sewers. Our seas are also sometimes spoiled by oil spills and leaks\u2014big\u00a0and\u00a0small\u2014and are consistently soaking up carbon pollution from the air. The ocean absorbs as much as\u00a0a quarter of man-made carbon emissions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Point source:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

When contamination originates from a single source, it\u2019s called\u00a0point source pollution. Examples include wastewater (also called effluent) discharged legally or illegally by a manufacturer, oil refinery, or wastewater treatment facility, as well as contamination from leaking septic systems, chemical and oil spills, and illegal dumping. The EPA\u00a0regulates point source\u00a0pollution by establishing limits on what can be discharged by a facility directly into a body of water. While point source pollution originates from a specific place, it can affect miles of waterways and ocean<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nonpoint source:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Nonpoint source pollution is contamination derived from diffuse sources. These may include agricultural or stormwater runoff or debris blown into waterways from land.\u00a0Nonpoint source pollution is\u00a0<\/strong>the\u00a0leading cause of water pollution\u00a0worldwide, but it\u2019s difficult to regulate, since there\u2019s no single, identifiable culprit.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Transboundary:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

It goes without saying that water pollution can\u2019t be contained by a line on a map. Transboundary pollution is the result of contaminated water from one country spilling into the waters of another. Contamination can result from a disaster\u2014like an oil spill\u2014or the slow, downriver creep of industrial, agricultural, or municipal discharge.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Saving water is a good deed,\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

it\u2019s an essential resource, we all need\u2026!<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Vardhman Envirotech,
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

India’s Passionate Rainwater Company.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

British poet\u00a0W. H. Auden\u00a0once noted, \u201cThousands have lived without love, not one without water.\u201d Our rivers, reservoirs, lakes, and seas are drowning in chemicals, waste, plastic, and other pollutants. Yet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vardhmanenvirotech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vardhmanenvirotech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vardhmanenvirotech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vardhmanenvirotech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vardhmanenvirotech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2667"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vardhmanenvirotech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3722,"href":"https:\/\/www.vardhmanenvirotech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions\/3722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vardhmanenvirotech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vardhmanenvirotech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vardhmanenvirotech.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}