What body of water has the highest concentration of water pollution?

Answer 1

There's no easy answer to this question, because a lot depends on what you consider a body of water and what you consider pollution. A few strong contenders:

BERKELEY PIT - Montana - The Berkeley Pit, a former copper pit mining site in Butte and currently a deep artificial lake, is far from unique in its toxicity. There are similarly toxic sites scattered throughout the world, particularly in the former Soviet Union and China. Berkeley is particularly famous due to its location in a wealthy country, however, and nicely illustrates the hazards of abandoned minings sites. The water of the Berkeley pit is lethal to all but a few unicellular extremophiles, and is a regular killer of migratory birds. Most notoriously, an entire flight of endangered trumpeter swans died in the Pit. If you're looking at straight toxicity, old open pit mines are definitely the most toxic bodies of water on Earth.

ARAL SEA - Uzbekistan/Kazakhstan - Once upon a time, the Aral Sea supported a thriving fishery in the midst of Central Asia. However, the Soviet Union diverted most of the water from the region's rivers to grow cotton and, over time, the Sea shrank to a tiny remnant of its former self. Nowadays, the water is too salty and toxic to support significant life, the areas fields are choked with salt blown in from the old seabed, dust storms assail the region, and--to top it all off--a Soviet chemical weapons lab and dump formerly on an Aral island is linked to more potent pollutants. In short, the Aral Sea has become a wasteland. I recently came across a study claiming that the Mediterranean is the world's most polluted sea (http://www.iberianature.com/spainblog/2007/07/23/the-most-polluted-sea-in-the-world/), but that's absolutely absurd. The Med has severe pollution problems, but it enjoys a wealth of marine life still hanging on, in stark contrast to the Aral or even Caspian. I can only assume that they use a different definition of "sea" than do I.

CITARUM RIVER - Indonesia - If human litter is your pollutant of choice, it's hard to beat this. Check out a recent report in the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=460077&in_page_id=1811. That said, the world's largest masses of accumulated litter are in the Pacific Ocean. Vast quantities of human garbage (mostly plastics) are gradually left by currents in dead zones in the middle of the ocean. One of these accumulations is, I believe, the size of Texas.

LAKE NYOS - Cameroon - The most notorious of a rare type of natural lake prone to limnic explosions. A pocket of magma beneath the lake leaches carbon dioxide into its lower strata. Every once in a (long) while, the lake degasses in a catastrophic explosion, releasing immense quantities of carbon dioxide into the surrounding area. In the last explosion of Lake Nyos--in 1986--1700 people died (source: NYT: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E2DC1F39F934A15751C0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink). There have been several similar incidents at other lakes within recorded history, and the worst may be yet to come; Lake Kivu, one of the African Great Lakes, is also prone to limnic explosions. This is probably not what you meant by "pollutants," but I've always been interested in Nyos.

YANGTZE RIVER - China - Like most of China's bodies of water, the Yangtze has suffered badly from industrialization. The plight of the Yangtze River Dolphin has publicized the problem in the West, but rivers are a real health hazard to humans as well. I would bet that Chinese suffer, on average, from more pollution than any other nationality on the face on the Earth.

This all barely scratches the surface, of course. What of the slurry dams of Appalachia? The toxic pits below gold mines in Africa and South America? The Rivers of Russia and Ukraine? The Finland Sea, practically glowing with nuclear waste and industrial effluent? Yes, my friend, the world of aquatic pollution is depressingly rich and full of variety. May you enjoy your explorations of it.