Water pollution is the pollution of bodies of water such as lakes, rivers, the oceans as well as groundwater.

It occurs when pollutants reach these bodies of water without treatment. Waste from homes, factories and
other buildings get into the water bodies. It affects plants and organisms living in the water

We examine the many ways the substances mankind throws away have polluted lakes, rivers
and even the oceans. The United Nations estimate that around 10% of the world’s people do
not have access to clean drinking water. That’s over 700 million people. The main problem
with this untreated water is that it can carry diseases, such as cholera, that spread through
untreated human faeces. This is particularly serious in shanty towns near big cities and in
refugee camps. Rivers and streams can also be polluted with diseases from water coming
from badly managed rubbish dumps. But human sewage is not the only substance that
pollutes our water supplies – most of the other substances humans allow to escape into
streams, rivers and the oceans, are more a danger to natural ecosystems than to us directly.
Chemical fertilisers are much more soluble in water than organic, manure-based fertilisers,
so heavy rain can wash them into streams and lakes, causing eutrophication. The fertilisers
cause algae to grow very fast forming a mat on the lake surface, which blocks sunlight from
the vegetation deeper down, which then dies. Bacteria feed off the dying vegetation and use
up the remaining oxygen supply. Once the oxygen has gone all animal life dies and the lake
ecosystem is destroyed. If heavy metals, such as lead mercury and cadmium, get into rivers
and lakes many animals will die. In Minamata, Japan, a polluting mercury fungicide factory
was closed in 1968, yet people there have continued to be affected by the mercury
poisoning, the so-called Minemata disease ever since because the fish caught locally in the
bay, still have traces of mercury in them.
Radioactive waste is normally stored above ground in water tanks, waiting for a more
permanent underground storage where it has to be safe for millions of years. There are fears
that these underground stores could fail and contaminate water courses. Following a nuclear
disaster, water courses and the oceans can become dangerously polluted with radioactive
waste.
During mining and drilling operations to extract minerals from the earth, aquifers, which are
underground water courses, can become polluted. Huge amounts of plastic thrown away
from ships, and washed out to sea from rubbish dumps on land, have ended up floating in
huge islands of waste causing a serious threat to fish, seabirds and other marine animals.
Coal and oil fuelled power stations have been responsible, more so in the past, for causing
acid rain.
Fossil fuel and nuclear power stations need large amounts of water for condensing the steam
which drives their turbines. This water is usually cooled on site in the great cooling towers
that dominate the skyline of power-stations. Even so the water will be returned to the river or
sea warmer than before. This can upset the river or sea ecosystems. Although not material
pollution this waste heat is a pollutant