WATER POLLUTION
INTRODUCTION
- Clean, fresh drinking water is essential to human and other lifeforms. Access to safe drinking water has improved steadily and substantially over the last decades in almost every part of the world. However, some observers have estimated that by 2025 more than half of the world population will be facing water-based vulnerability..
- Water pollution is the contamination of water bodies (e.g. lakes, rivers, oceans, groundwater).
- Water pollution affects plants and organisms living in these bodies of water; and, in almost all cases the effect is damaging either to individual species and populations, but also to the natural biological communities.
- Water pollution occurs when pollutants are discharged directly or indirectly into water bodies without adequate treatment to remove harmful compounds.
