A pollutant is a waste material that pollutes air, water or soil.

Three factors determine the severity of a pollutant: its chemical nature, the concentration and the persistence.

POLLUTION
Pollution is an undesirable change in the chemical, physical, or biological characteristics of nature. Pollutant Substance that is present in an excessive amount in the environment as a result at human activities. Pollutants have damaging effects on health. They are also harmful to other living organisms.

AIR POLLUTION
Air pollution occurs when pollutants including smoke, dirt, dust and poisonous gases are released into the air endangering humans lives and other living organisms.

AIR POLLUTION IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Every day, the average person inhales about 20,000 liters of air. Every time we breathe, we risk inhaling dangerous chemicals that have found their way into the air. Air pollution includes all contaminants found in the atmosphere. These dangerous substances can be either in the form of gases or particles. Air pollution can be found both outdoors and indoors. Pollutants can be trapped inside buildings, causing indoor pollution that lasts for a long time. 3

The sources of air pollution are both natural and human-based. As one might expect, humans have been producing increasing amounts of pollution as time has progressed, and they now account for the majority of pollutants released into the air. Air pollution has been a problem throughout history. Even in Ancient Rome people complained about smoke put into the atmosphere. The effects of air pollution are diverse and numerous. Air pollution can have serious consequences for the health of human beings, and also severely affects natural ecosystems. Because it is located in the atmosphere, air pollution is able to travel easily. As a result, air pollution is a global problem and has been the subject of global cooperation and conflict. Some areas now suffer more than others from air pollution. Cities with large numbers of automobiles or those that use great quantities of coal often suffer most severely from problems of air pollution.

WATER POLLUTION
Disharging industrial wastes,agriculture waste,dosmetik wastes and sewage into rivers contribute to water pollution. Thus,causing the water to be unsafe for humans can consumption as well as endangering the lives of aquatik organisms.

EUTROFICATION :

THE EFFECTS OF WATER POLLUTION

Water pollution is a major global problem which requires ongoing evaluation and revision of water resource policy at all levels (international down to individual aquifers and wells). It has been suggested that it is the leading worldwide cause of deaths and diseases, and that it accounts for the deaths of more than 14,000 people daily. The effects of water pollution are increasingly drawing the environment and human beings as well to feel the pinch of polluted water. Water pollution affects our, rivers, lakes, oceans and drinking water. With the increase in population and industrial development, demand for water has increased. Water is getting polluted when chemicals, harmful contaminants are detected Human beings have the most crucial impact on our water resources. Moreover the need for water is far more in the society today than the quantity of water available. Some water pollution effects show up immediately where as others dont show up for months or years. The water pollution has damaged the food chain and is very important for the food preparation of plants through photosynthesis When Filth is thrown in water the toxins travel from the water and when the animals drink that water they get contaminated and when humans tend to eat the meat of the animals is infected by toxins it causes further damage to the humans. Infectious diseases such as cholera and typhoid can be contracted from drinking contaminated water. Our whole body system can have a lot of harm if polluted water is consumed regularly. Other health problems associated with polluted water are poor blood pressure, vomiting, skin lesions and damage to the nervous system. In fact the evil effects of water pollution 6

are said to be the leading cause of death of humans across the globe. Pollutants in the water alter the over all chemistry of water, causing a lot of changes in temperature. These factors overall have had an adverse effect on marine life and pollutes and kills marine life. Marine life gets affected by the ecological balance in bodies of water, especially the rivers and the lakes. Water pollution effects have a huge impact on the health of an individual and the environment as a whole. The balance between the nature and the humans can be protected and should be maintained .But t it will take efforts on all fronts by each and every individual from the society to prevent and eliminate water pollution locally and globally.

THERMAL POLLUTION
Atmospheric pollution in terms of changes in temperature of the surrounding atmosphere due to release of hot vapour from nuclear power plants, industrial effluents, domestic sewage, etc., is termed as thermal pollution

What is Thermal Pollution :

Waste Heat - A pollutant as dangerous to waters as more tangible of forms of waste Human activity can change normal temperature: By altering environment of watercourse: Road building , logging, poundments, diverting flows for irrigation Adding or removing heat. On national scale, industrial cooling waters is a first-order source of heat. Electro power generation uses 80% of cooling waters. Best single index of thermal pollution lies in projecting future electric power generation. Past experience has indicated that thermal pollution has not multiplied as fast as power generation because of improvements in thermal plant efficiency and developement of hydropower. Nulear plants - waste even higher proportion of heat than fossil-fuel plants. Heat rejection is expected to increase nine fold by the year 2000. Problem is one of managing tremendous amounts of waste heat in a manner that will maintain or enhance, physical, chemical and biological nature of our water resources.

Effect of Thermal Pollution:

Warm water typically decreases the level of dissolved oxygen in the water. The decrease in levels of dissolved oxygen can harm aquatic animals such as fish, amphibians and copepods. Thermal pollution may also increase the metabolic rate of aquatic animals, as enzyme activity, resulting in these organisms consuming more food in a shorter time than if their environment were not changed. An increased metabolic rate may result in food source shortages, causing a sharp decrease in a population. Changes in the environment may also result in a migration of organisms to another, more suitable environment, and to in-migration of organisms that normally only live in

warmer waters elsewhere. This leads to competition for fewer resources; the more adapted organisms moving in may have an advantage over organisms that are not used to the warmer temperature. As a result one has the problem of compromising food chains of the old and new environments. Biodiversity can be decreased as a result. In the 1970s there was considerable activity from scientists in quantifying effects of thermal pollution. Hydrologists, physicists, meteorologists, and computer scientists combined their skills in one of the first interdisciplinary pursuits of the modern environmental science era. First came the application of gaussian function dispersal modeling that forecasts how a thermal plume is formed from a thermal point source and predicts the distribution of aquatic temperatures. The ultimate model was developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency introducing the statistical variations in meteorology to predict the resulting plume from a thermal outfall. Coal-burning power plants are known producers of thermal pollution in nearby bodies of water that they use as cooling ponds. This research focused on the effects that thermal pollution caused by the Marshall Steam Station had on Lake Norman, North Carolina. It was found that dissolved oxygen in the steam station's discharge cove was decreased by approximately four mg/L as compared to a site ten miles upstream, and was decreased by about three mg/L as compared to a cove several hundred yards downstream. Temperatures of the surface water in the discharge

NOISE POLLUTION

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NOISE POLLUTION IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Noise pollution is a type of energy pollution in which distracting, irritating, or damaging sounds are freely audible. As with other forms of energy pollution (such as heat and light pollution), noise pollution contaminants are not physical particles, but rather waves that interfere with naturally-occurring waves of a similar type in the same environment. Thus, the definition of noise pollution is open to debate, and there is no clear border as to which sounds may constitute noise pollution. In the most narrow sense, sounds are considered noise pollution if they adversely affect wildlife, human activity, or are capable of damaging physical structures on a regular, repeating basis. In the broadest sense of the term, a sound may be considered noise pollution if it disturbs any natural process or causes human harm, even if the sound does not occur on a regular basis. The prevailing source of artificial noise pollution is from transportation. In rural areas, train and airplane noise can disturb wildlife habits, thereby affecting the manner in which animals in areas around train tracks and airports hunt and mate. In urban areas, automobile, motorcycle, and even entertainment noise can cause sleep disruption in humans and animals, hearing loss, heart disease (as a result of stress), and in severe cases even mental instability. A notable exception to the rule is the electric, or hybrid-electric, automobile. Hybrid vehicles are so quite, in fact, that legislation is pending to actually make them louder. This is in response to numerous injuries in which pedestrians, unaware of a hybrid vehicle's presence, have been struck by such vehicles in parking lots and pedestrian crosswalks.

Although most developed nations have government agencies responsible for the protection of the environment, no nation has a single body that regulates noise pollution. In the United States, regulation of noise pollution was stripped from the federal Environmental Protection Agency and passed on the the individual states in the early 1980's. Although two noise-control bills passed by the EPA are still in effect, the agency can no longer form relevant legislation. In the United States, Canada, Europe, and most other developed parts of the world, different types of
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noise are managed by agencies responsible for the source of the noise. Transportation noise is usually regulated by the relevant transportation ministry, health-related work noise is often regulated by health ministries and worker's unions, and entertainment noise such as loud music is a criminal offense in many areas. As the bodies responsible for noise pollution reduction usually view noise as an annoyance rather than a problem, and reducing that noise often hurts the industry financially, little is currently being done to reduce noise pollution in developed countries.

THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT AND THINNING OF THE OZONE LAYER

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PHENOMENON OF GREEN HOUSE EFFECT

The greenhouse effect is a process by which thermal radiation from a planetary surface is absorbed by atmospheric greenhouse gases, and is re-radiated in all directions. Since part of this re-radiation is back towards the surface, energy is transferred to the surface and the lower atmosphere. As a result, the temperature 13

there is higher than it would be if direct heating by solar radiation were the only warming mechanism. Solar radiation at the high frequencies of visible light passes through the atmosphere to warm the planetary surface, which then emits this energy at the lower frequencies of infrared thermal radiation. Infrared radiation is absorbed by greenhouse gases, which in turn re-radiate much of the energy to the surface and lower atmosphere. The mechanism is named after the effect of solar radiation passing through glass and warming a greenhouse, but the way it retains heat is fundamentally different as a greenhouse works by reducing airflow, isolating the warm air inside the structure so that heat is not lost by convection. The greenhouse effect was discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824, first reliably experimented on by John Tyndall in 1858, and first reported quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896. If an ideal thermally conductive blackbody was the same distance from the Sun as the Earth is, it would have a temperature of about 5.3 C. However, since the Earth reflects about 30% (or 28%) of the incoming sunlight, the planet's effective temperature (the temperature of a blackbody that would emit the same amount of radiation) is about 18 or 19 C, about 33C below the actual surface temperature of about 14 C or 15 C. The mechanism that produces this difference between the actual surface temperature and the effective temperature is due to the atmosphere and is known as the greenhouse effect. Earths natural greenhouse effect makes life as we know it possible. However, human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels and clearing of forests, have greatly intensified the natural greenhouse effect, causing global warming.

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