What is pollution explain soil pollution and its causes. effects. solution and. conclusion?
Answers
Soil Pollution has gradually become a major challenge that we need to overcome for establishing a healthy environment. Weathering of earth’s crusts by different processes leads to the formation of soil that accumulates over the centuries. The soil is the home for a large part of bacterial biodiversity and other microscopic and macroscopic living organisms.
Soil pollution refers to anything that causes contamination of soil and degrades the soil quality. It occurs when the pollutants causing the pollution reduce the quality of the soil and convert the soil inhabitable for microorganisms and macro organisms living in the soil.
Soil contamination or soil pollution can occur either because of human activities or because of natural processes. However, mostly it is due to human activities. The soil contamination can occur due to the presence of chemicals such as pesticides, herbicides, ammonia, petroleum hydrocarbons, lead, nitrate, mercury, naphthalene, etc in an excess amount.
The primary cause of soil pollution is a lack of awareness in general people. Thus, due to many different human activities such as overuse of pesticides the soil will lose its fertility. Moreover, the presence of excess chemicals will increase the alkalinity or acidity of soil thus degrading the soil quality. This will in turn cause soil erosion. This soil erosion refers to soil pollution.
Causes of Soil Pollution
Soil pollution can be natural or due to human activity. However, it mostly boils down to the activities of the human that causes the majority of soil pollution such as heavy industries, or pesticides in agriculture.
Pesticides
Before World War II, the chemical nicotine chemical present in the tobacco plants was used as the pest controlling substance in agricultural practices. However, DDT was found to be extremely useful for malaria control and as pest control of many insects during World War II. Therefore, it was used for controlling many diseases.
Hence, post-war, people started using it as pest control in agriculture for killing rodents, weeds, insects, etc and avoiding the damages due to these pests. However, everyone gradually the adverse effects of this chemical which led to the ban of this chemical in many parts of the world including India.
Moreover, pests became resistance to DDT due to the chemicals regular use. Hence this led to the introduction of other harmful chemicals such as Aldrin and Dieldrin. Pesticides are synthetic toxic chemicals that definitely kill different types of pests and insects causing damage to agriculture but it has many ecological repercussions.
They are generally insoluble in water and non-biodegradable. Therefore, these chemicals will not gradually decompose and keep on accumulating in the soil. Therefore, the concentration of these chemicals will increase when the transfer of these chemicals take place from lower to higher trophic level via the food chain. Hence, it will cause many metabolic and physiological disorders in humans.