LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Pollution: Waters
built 193 days ago
Pollution hurts the Earth's land, water and air. Click on the smokestack to the left to find out more about pollution and how you can help make the environment clean and safe. Find out more.
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Concommitant with the primary pollution, algae and other "out -of- balance" plant species start to grow as the result of being fertilized by the surge of nutrients from the above-mentioned sources. These fertilized plants, in turn, die and decompose, further robbing the water of its naturally dissolved oxygen. This phase is called secondary pollution (Diagram A), or "eutrophication", and is considerably more damaging to the oxygen level than primary pollution. The principal nutrients causing secondary pollution are nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Secondary pollution is measured by how much fertilizer is added to water. To understand their growth potential in water, it is necessary to know which nutrients in it are in short supply in the water.
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Agriculture is ... a major source of pollution. World population growth has been accompanied by increased crop yields, which have been made possible by heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides. Nitrogenous fertilizers, an important part of the increased yield, result in nitrite contamination of drinking water, to which infants are particularly vulnerable. Nitrogenous fertilizers contribute to oxygen problems in water bodies and to greenhouse gas emissions. Phosphate fertilizers are of concern because of trace amounts of cadmium and other heavy metals that sometimes are part of natural phosphates. Cadmium can be taken up into certain crops, can cause renal toxicity, and is a potential carcinogen.
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China's rapid industrialization has increased pollution and made it the world's leader in carbon dioxide emissions. China has some relevant regulations: the 1979 Environmental Protection Law, which was largely modelled on U.S. legislation. But the environment continues to deteriorate, wrote Xiaoying Ma and Leonard Ortolanor in 2002. Twelve years after the law, only one Chinese city was making an effort to clean up its water discharges (Sinkule, 1995). This indicates that China is about 30 years behind the U.S. schedule of environmental regulation and 10 to 20 years behind Europe.
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As humans developed new technologies, the magnitude and severity of pollution increased. Many historians speculate that the extensive use of lead plumbing for drinking water in Rome caused chronic lead poisoning in those who could afford such plumbing. The mining and smelting of ores that accompanied the transition from the Stone Age to the Metal Age resulted in piles of mining wastes that spread potentially toxic elements such as mercury, copper, lead, and nickel throughout the environment.
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China's rapid industrialization has substantially increased pollution. China has some relevant regulations: the 1979 Environmental Protection Law, which was largely modelled on U.S. legislation. But the environment continues to deteriorate.[12] Twelve years after the law, only one Chinese city was making an effort to clean up its water discharges.[13] This indicates that China is about 30 years behind the U.S. schedule of environmental regulation and 10 to 20 years behind Europe. In July 2007, it was reported that the World Bank reluctantly censored a report revealing that 750,000 people in China die every year as a result of pollution-related diseases. China's State Environment Protection Agency and the Health Ministry asked the World Bank to cut the calculations of premature deaths from the report fearing the revelation would provoke "social unrest".[14]
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