Water Pollution And Its Effect On The Ecosystem

WATER POLLUTION AND ITS EFFECT ON THE ECOSYSTEM

Introduction

About 70 of the earth surface is composed of water . Water is therefore a precious substance for life . It is undoutly one of the most precious natural resource that we have in the world . Just made of hydrogen and oxygen , water is crucial in supporting life on earth which would be otherwise non-existent without these two elements . Water is basically essential for all the process on this earth (6 , 12

However , even with this knowledge , human have been polluting rivers lakes and

oceans at an alarming rate . We are losing a lot of aquatic habitat and destruction of aquatic ecosystem at a rate that we may soon put this planet in the danger of extinction . We have been haring our planet through our careless activities which are causing death of water species . In addition to killing of millions of water species , we have also been dirtying our drinking water . Water is an important component of our life that we cannot do without and therefore whether it is clean and safe or dirty and polluted , we will have to drink it . We have continuously endangered our health through consumption of dirty and polluted water (4

There have been several measures that have been instituted in to mitigate the situation but to no avail . Yes we accept that we have made some progress but we have not reached where we were supposed to be . We are yet to combat water pollution to the full . But first we have to understand the different factors that are entwined in water pollution so that we can understand the solutions and their drawbacks . Water pollution has led to disruption of the aquatic ecosystem while we are busy discussion political , social and ethical considerations to deal with the problem

Ecological problem and its causes

Water pollution means to make it foul , unclean or dirty . It occurs when water is adversely affected by an activity which adds large amount of materials . When this material is unfit or incompatible with the intended use of water , then we say that the water has been polluted The material that makes water unfit for the intended use is called the pollutant

Water pollution is an ecological problem as it affects a variety of life forms that depends on the water . Water body forms an important ecosystem in which there are different species that depend on each other and therefore when water is polluted this cycle of interaction is affected . One of the major effects of water pollution has been loss of some species in the water ecosystem

Pollutant can be from a point source or they can be from a non-point source . Point source occurs when pollutant is emitted direct to a body of water . For example the industry emission or oil spill from the traveling vessel (12

On the other hand non point pollution occurs when pollutants are indirectly delivered to the body of the water mainly through the environmental changes...