The Problem Of Reducing Water Quality - 1361 Words

Only about 1% of all of the water that is on Earth is considered to be surface water such as lakes and rivers, however, the usable freshwater to us humans is only about .003% which we generally use for drinking, bathing, agriculture, or industry purposes. Unfortunately, pollution is reducing our few water resources even further on a global scale albeit mostly in developed countries. The United Nations have assessed the situation well in that, â€Å"Declining water quality has become a global issue of concern as human populations grow, industrial and agricultural activities expand, and climate change threatens to cause major alterations to the hydrological cycle†(Decade). This threat to our planet is mainly anthropological and has been growing†¦show more content†¦Water pollution can be distributed from either a point or a non-point source. A point source is typically pollution that comes from one single location and is easier to identify, such as from a pipe, municipa l WWTP discharge, a factory, or a ditch. A non-point source is categorized as pollution that has come from multiple sites over very large areas and are quite difficult to trace back and identify accurately. Some examples would be oil from the many streets of a city, different pesticides and fertilizer runoff from certain farms, some forest runoff, etc. There are three varied types of surface water pollution. One type is biological pollution which comes from disease causing organisms like bacteria. Another is chemical pollution which is either natural like nutrient pollution or artificial such as from fertilizers, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals. There is also physical pollution that can be from sources like solid waste, thermal, sediments, etc. Biological pollution consists of infections stemming from two sources. The first is a direct source such as from the microbes in the water like typhoid, cholera, etc. that when drunken directly are known to cause symptoms like hepatitis and dysentery. The other is from an indirect source like water breeding carriers, like the infamous mosquito, that spread diseases such as yellow fever, the West Nile virus, malaria, etc. Chemical water