Water_Pollution

Water Pollution Water pollution is the contamination of lakes, streams, bays, underground water, or oceans by substances harmful to living things. All organisms contain and need water. Some live in it and most drink it. Plants and animals require water that is mostly pure, and they cannot survive if their water is loaded with toxic chemicals or harmful microorganisms. Water pollution can kill large numbers of plants, fish, birds, and other animals. Pollution makes streams, lakes, and coastal waters unpleasant to look at, to smell, and to swim in. Organisms harvested from polluted waters may be unsafe to eat. People that consume polluted water can become ill, and may develop cancers or bear children with birth defects. Oil has been dumped into the water since the US Civil War. Every year, around 1 and 10 billion tons of oil are spilt into the ocean, killing many species and destroying the ecosystem in the area. Garbage, sewage, sludge, and toxic pollutants are all dumped into the water. Across the world, about half of all sewage water, pollution, effects, dumped, clean, animals, world, waters, toxic, streams, spent, since, sewage, projects, polluted, plants, organisms, oil, life, lakes, human, harmful, government, fish, federal, chemicals, bodies, billion, been, year, war, unsafe, unpleasant, united, underground