Question

Water pollution essay for school children

Answer 1

 Water pollution has been an increasing problem over the last few years. Pollution itself is when a substance or energy is introduced into the soil, air, or water in a concentrate. Pollution comes in many forms; agricultural, urban runoff, industrial, sedimentary, animal wastes, and leeching from landfills/septic systems just to name a few. These pollutants are very detrimental to the environment. Whether they are alone or combined with another form of pollution they are very harmful. Over the last hundred years the problems with pollution have been increasing with time. This is due to both the increase in human population, and the increases in technology we have made as a society. If we plan on having our resources here for many years to come we are going to have to make some drastic changes in the way we treat the earth, and these changes will have to start with our pollutants.
             Agricultural pollution is a very big contributor to water pollution. Problems we see with agriculture are applications of fertilizers, insecticides, and pesticides. We have made vast improvements in the types of chemicals we are using, as to how environmentally friendly they are. Yet even today the effects of these chemicals are very harsh, for instance:
             "The annual total output of pesticides in the United States is more than 2.5 billion pounds with 1500 active ingredients in some 45,000 products. Each year, approximately one billion pounds of pesticides containing more than 600 active ingredients, are applied to farms and gardens. Of this quantity, an estimated of 3.5 to 21 million pounds reach surface waters before degrading. (Rural Groundwater Contamination) 

Answer 2

The level of fresh drinking water is becoming less day by day on the earth. There is a limited availability of drinking water on the earth however that too is getting polluted because of human activities. It is tough to estimate the possibility of life on the earth in the absence of fresh drinking water. Water pollution is the mixing of foreign substances by means of organic, inorganic, biological and radiological in the water degrading the quality and usefulness of water.

Hazardous pollutants may contain various types of impurities including harmful chemicals, dissolved gases, suspended matters, dissolved minerals, and even microbes. All the contaminants reduce the level of dissolved oxygen in the water and affecting the lives of animals and human beings to a great extent. Dissolved oxygen is the oxygen present in water required by the aquatic system to continue the lives of plants and animals. However biochemical oxygen is the demanded oxygen by the aerobic micro-organisms to oxidize organic matters of wastes. Water pollution is caused by two means, one is natural water pollution (due to the leaching of rocks, decay of organic matters, decay of dead matters, silting, soil erosion, etc) and another one is man-made water pollution (due to the deforestation, set up of industries near large water bodies, high level emission of industrial wastes, domestic sewage, synthetic chemicals, radio-active wastes, fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides etc)