Environmental Effects Of Water Pollution

According to Rowell (2012), with the ever ongoing and increasing industrial activities in developing nations across the globe, water quality in the most impoverished areas has become increasingly worse. Furthermore, bacteria and parasites in the waterways of third world countries are no longer the only worries; issues of mining and heavy industry pollution are now adding to the clean water crisis — often times in the form of toxic heavy metals.

Lead, mercury, and cadmium are prime examples of such "toxic metals” (Adal, 2016). Mercury, lead, copper, iron, and other naturally-occurring metals find their way into our water sources by both natural- and man-made means such as agricultural and industrial waste and runoff (Crouse, 2014). Furthermore, Adal (2016) also stated that classic examples of environmental contamination include the Minimata Bay disaster and the current epidemic of arsenic poisoning in South East Asia. Focusing on the former example, in the 1950s, industrial effluent was consistently dumped into Japan’s Minimata Bay, causing mercury to bioaccumulate to exceedingly high concentrations in local fish. Although some adults did develop signs and symptoms of toxicity, the greatest impact was on the next generation, into which many were born with severe neurologic deficits. Shifting our attention towards the latter example, millions of people living in and around Bangladesh are currently at risk for organ dysfunction and cancer from chronic arsenic