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What Is Pollution - Final

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28 views2 pages

What Is Pollution - Final

Uploaded by

anngelavarghese
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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What is Pollution?

n m ental impacts
n viro
Types and e
What is Pollution
1. Pollution is the introduction of substances or energy (such as light or
heat) into the natural environment in amounts or concentrations that
can be harmful for humans, animals, and plants.
2. Pollution can reduce the health of ecosystems by harming or even causing
death to the living things that call those ecosystems home. The negative
effects of pollution can range in severity depending on what the pollutant
is, the characteristics of the pollutant, and where the pollutant is located.
3. Pollution is most often composed of synthetic, or human-made substances
(like plastic, for example), although even natural substances like sediment,
nutrients, and carbon dioxide can become pollutants when they exceed a
particular level. If natural substances exceed healthy levels, however, it is
very likely the result of human activities.
4. The way in which pollution is categorized, studied, and managed depends
on what Earth system is affected. Parts of Earth’s systems that can be
affected by pollution include land, waterways (such as ground-water,
rivers, lakes, bays, and oceans), air, and climate.

What are some different types of pollution?


5. Water, air, and land pollution are three major categories of pollution.
Sometimes pollution is easy to detect and is obvious to see, like an oil
spill from a ship in the ocean. However, pollution can also be hard to see,
like in the case of many types of air pollution. Specific pollutants can
also contaminate more than one system at a time. For example, spilled
chemicals may contaminate soil at the spill site (land pollution), and rain
water may carry the chemicals and some of the contaminated soil into
waterways (water pollution).
6. Land pollution can be anything from litter on the streets to spilled
chemicals, such as gasoline in a gas station parking lot. A large portion
of land pollution comes from industrial waste, which is generated from
manufacturers or factories. It can also come from commercial waste
produced by businesses, such as plastic food wrappers.
7. Another common source of land pollution is solid waste, such as household
garbage. The garbage, or trash, that we generate includes things like food
packaging, food waste, personal care products, and other unwanted items.
8. Land pollution can become water or air pollution. In fact, most of the
pollution in the ocean comes from sources on land! One major way that
this happens is through runoff, when rain or wind washes pollutants off the
land and into storm drains or waterways. As the runoff travels, it picks up
any pollutants in its path like trash and chemicals. Once in storm drains,
the polluted runoff can then enter streams, rivers, and eventually bays and
the ocean.
9. Air Pollution is a mixture of gases and solid particles in the air. Air
pollution comes from the exhaust that cars and trucks produce when
they burn gasoline for fuel, chemicals from factories, dust, mold, smog,
and other sources. Air pollution can reach harmful concentrations both
outside and indoors.
10. Water pollution can occur when pollutants are introduced into ground-
water, rivers, lakes, ponds, and oceans. Sources of water pollution include
synthetic materials like plastics, chemicals, pesticides, and fertilizers,
and natural materials like nutrients and sediments. These pollutants often
accumulate or build up as they flow downstream. They often eventually
end up in bays and oceans, since all of these waterways are connected.

What are the effects of pollution on the environment and living things?
11. Pollution harms the environment by making it less suitable for living
things. Sometimes a pollutant is toxic or dangerous and can directly cause
living things to die. However, lower amounts of a pollutant or different
types of pollutants may make a living thing sick, cause injury, or reduce
its ability to find good habitat or food.
12. Pollutants can be especially dangerous when they accumulate, or
build up, in an ecosystem and reach high, toxic concentrations. Plants
and animals can absorb or ingest toxins from pollution, which can be
damaging to their own health. As organisms eat each other, toxins from
the pollution can then be passed from organism to organism up the
food chain, increasing in concentration each time until they are at such
high levels that they can cause death or serious health problems to the
organism. Air pollution can be very dangerous to the animals and humans
who breathe it in. It can cause short-term issues such as sneezing or
coughing as well as long-term problems such as disease and even death.

What is plastic pollution?


13. Much of the solid waste that becomes land and water pollution is made
of plastic. There are many properties of plastic pollution that make it
dangerous to natural environments. Items made of plastic (like plastic
bags and bottles) are lightweight and float, which makes it easy for them
to travel by wind and water into the environment. Because plastic is very
durable and it can withstand damage, plastics can remain in ecosystems
for years and years. As pollution, plastic can injure animals if they
become entangled in it (for example, if an animal gets tangled in an
abandoned plastic nylon fishing net) or if animals ingest plastic because
they mistake it for food.

What can you do to help?


14. Pollution can cause a variety of negative changes to the environment and
the living things that call it home (including us). Can you think of ways
you could prevent different types of pollution in your environment and
beyond?

Symbols courtesy of the Integration and Application Network,


A Wave of Plastic Article University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
(ian.umces.edu/symbols/).

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