Causes of Water Pollution

1.Industrial discharges cause a lot of water pollution incidents. Some stretches of river in the UK used to have no fish at all because the water was so polluted from factories disharging effluent into them. Many are now much cleaner; even the Thames now has fish once again. But this pattern of industrial pollution is being repeated in many countries. Some rivers in the east of Europe are now heavily polluted. Industrial causes of water pollution are becoming more closely monitored and controlled in many countries. 2.Groundwater in underground aquifers (underground water sources) can also become polluted. This can happen even from household use of weed killers. A study in 1996 of groundwater wells in Iowa, USA, found that over half of them were polluted by chemicals from weed killers. 3.Farmers' use of chemical fertilisers can also affect surface waters such as lakes and rivers and eventually end up in groundwaters too. Agricultural run-off can cause algae in the water to "bloom" or reproduce at an artificially fast rate, until the water is choked with organisms, which then tend to suffocate and die as there is not enough oxygen in the water to support them.