Changes occurring in water due to pollution?

Answer 1

There are lots of changes to water when it becomes polluted. Fresh water can easily be polluted through sewage or ground water run off of chemicals as well as industrial discharge. Sometimes flooding can cause pollution as the water eventually runs into rivers that can seriously affect the things living there as it is often polluted by everything from fuel oil, petrol and diesel from flooded cars, sewage and organic matter. Chemicals can be toxic and that can kill things living in it. Detrital loading, from discharging organic matter into water can provide a substrate for bacteria that will remove oxygen from the water and kill other living things.

Even the seas, once thought to be too big for humans to be able to pollute, have changed. This is often local, near discharge pipes or rivers where different species can be found where the discharge has chemicals, organic matter or heat in it. The water itself will still be water but the animals and plants will inevitably change to species that prefer that environment.

Globally seas can be polluted by solids, typically plastics that floats around for decades and has created enormous rafts in ocean currents. Marine life often dies through ingesting plastic. Imbalances may be caused by discharge which can result in algal blooms and subsequent deoxygenation of the water even in the sea. Over fishing has altered the ecosystem in a more dramatic way than the better publicised oil tanker spills as key species are now taken so efficiently it changes the whole ecological balance.

Indirect changes caused by global warming include temperature, salinity, density and turbidity. Changes in global temperature changes the salinity of the water, particularly in areas where there has traditionally been large areas of ice such as the poles and near glaciers. These areas have seen the biggest changes alongside changes in average global temperature. Fresh water is less dense than salt water, which can create unusual currents or disturb naturally occurring currents. This has had an adverse effect on things like the kelp forests in the Southern Hemisphere. There is strong evidence to suggest that millions of years ago when the ice melted from the area of the Great Lakes, ocean currents were significantly changed by the introduction of such a large body of fresh water. Solubility of chemicals such as calcium carbonate used to make coral reefs, mollusk shells and reinforce arthropod exoskeletons changes with the temperature, and many species, particularly corals in temperate areas seem to be on the decline. Overall density of the seas will change with increasing average temperature which will make them expand and will result in changes in currents, weather and sea level.

Although water will continue to be water, the effects of pollution will be hardest felt on the organisms in it, although as such a significant global feature it will be evident to everyone that things have changed.

Answer 2

Yes, because the pollution mixes with the water(depending on what it is it may corupt the water); who knows what would happen if someone drank that!