Nowadays, water pollution is becoming truly catastrophic. It is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain water of acceptable purity for drinking. Let's look at some of the most dangerous types of pollution.
Chemical pollution of water comes from both industrial enterprises and household waste, billions of tons of which are scattered across the entire surface of not only land but also oceans. Organic synthetic materials, for example, a variety of plastics, paints, polymer fibers, washed away from the fields or pesticides thrown away as worthless, which some large agricultural holdings like to use, impregnated with wooden structures and many other substances that are not capable of biological degradation , but they can be included in the metabolism of living cells, acting there as catalysts for pathological metabolic processes.
And some chemicals that cause water pollution can be recycled by living organisms, but often into compounds that are much more toxic to biological organisms than the original ones. Some of them are reliable carcinogens (substances that cause the formation of cancerous tumors), others have pronounced teratogenic and mutagenic properties (that is, they cause congenital malformations or mutations of biological organisms). This kind of effect is inherent in halogenated hydrocarbons, polychromatic compounds and phenols.
Water pollution with nitrites and nitrates is most dangerous for children under the age of twelve. A sufficient amount of acid is still not produced in their stomachs to suppress those bacteria that convert nitrates to more toxic nitrites. But this problem concerns not only children, such nitro compounds are formed under certain conditions even in the stomachs of adults and cause general poisoning. With this kind of poisoning, newborns develop a methemoglobinemia disease called “blue baby syndrome”, with this disease red blood cells lose their ability to transport oxygen, the outcome of this pathology can be fatal.
The causes of cancer can be benzene and trichlorethylene and even asbestos. And when lead enters the body, serious neurological pathologies can appear, especially children suffer from this.
Water is also contaminated with chlorine compounds, which is generally used to purify it, but destroying microorganisms, it simultaneously saturates water with dangerous organochlorine compounds. From chlorine, water also acquires an unpleasant taste and loses transparency. And in the case when organochlorine compounds enter the body of a pregnant woman, they can cause severe congenital defects of the fetus, such as malformations of the heart and brain.
From manganese and iron, water acquires a blackish or brownish tint, its taste worsens, and the development of iron bacteria begins. Long-term use of such water contributes to the development of diseases of the blood, liver, and the occurrence of heart attacks. Oil pollution of water also introduces a whole range of complex organic substances into the water , which have a killer effect on both humans and the flora and fauna of water bodies.
It’s time for people to think about their actions, stop mocking the planet, because it can greatly reduce such a polluting factor as humanity with one insignificant movement on a planetary scale, for example, the eruption of a large volcano or the emergence of a new virus. People need to love nature, and it will reward a hundredfold.