Environmental Pollution

Tremendous increase in population and the industrial growth have drastically changed the natural environment. Development of crowded cities, industrial activity, excess usage of automobiles and many new inventions intended to make our life comfortable are making the environment unfit for our living. The increased resource use by people, depletion of fossil fuel reserves, and the large scale changes in land use systems are having a large impact on all components of the environment.

Environmental pollution refers to the activities of release of matter which deteriorates and pollutes the surroundings. It is one of the most serious problems being faced by inhabitants of this planet today.

Pollution

Pollution can be defined as an undesirable and excessive addition of substances to air, water and land which adversely alters the natural environment. It is the release of chemical, physical, biological or radioactive contaminants to the environment. Principal forms of pollution include:

Pollutant

Pollutant is a substances causing pollution. It is a constituent in the wrong amount at the wrong place or at the wrong time.

Pollutants have constantly been added into the environment but the problem arises when such addition is more than what can be removed from, or decomposed in the environment. For example, Nitrogen and phosphorous are essential for plant growth but when used in excess in the form of fertilizers they may cause pollution of the soil, from where they can reach the water bodies.

From the ecosystem viewpoint, pollutants can be categorized into non-biodegradable and biodegradable pollutants. Non-biodegradable materials, such as chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides (dichloro diphenyl trichloro ethane or DOT, benzene hexachloride or BHC, etc), waste plastic bottles, polyethylene bags, used soft-drink cans, etc, are other nor degraded, or degraded only very slowly by decomposers in the nature. Therefore, non-biodegradable pollutants are difficult to manage, and in most cases there is no treatment process to handle the anthropogenic input of such materials in the ecosystem.

Biodegradable pollutants, such as market garbage, livestock wastes, municipal sewage, etc, on the other hand, can be decomposed efficiently by the decomposers. Therefore, biodegradable pollutants are easily manageable by natural processes or in engineered systems.