Chapter 17
Spilling Over: Water Pollution
IN THIS CHAPTER
Identifying different water pollutants
Understanding where water pollution originates
Focusing on the health risks of water pollution
Realizing how water pollution affects ecosystems
Treating wastewater with man-made wetlands
Water covers more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. In fact, this natural resource is so vast that for many decades, as the Industrial Revolution blossomed, humans simply dumped waste materials into the nearest body of water under the assumption that the water would carry them far away or dilute them to meaningless levels.
Over the last 60 years, however, people have realized that water, like other matter, cycles through the environment (see Chapter 6 for details on the water, or hydrologic, cycle). This means that anything added to water in one location eventually affects the water resources of living things (plants, people, and other animals) in other locations.
The good news is that because of ...
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