Pollution and Its Adverse Effects

  British poet   W. H. Auden   once noted, “Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” Yet while we all know water is crucial for life, we trash it anyway. Some   80 percent of the world’s wastewater   is dumped—largely untreated—back into the environment, polluting rivers, lakes, and oceans. This widespread problem of water pollution is jeopardizing our health. Unsafe water  kills more people  each year than war and all other forms of violence combined. Meanwhile, our drinkable water sources are finite:  Less than 1 percent  of the earth’s freshwater is actually accessible to us. Without action, the challenges will only increase by 2050, when global demand for freshwater is expected to be  one-third greater  than it is now. Sip a glass of cool, clear water as you read this, and you may think water pollution is a problem . . . somewhere else. But while  most Americans have access to safe drinking water...

pollution control , in  environmental engineering , any of a variety of means employed to limit damage  done  to the  environment  by the discharge of harmful substances and energies. Specific means of pollution control might include  refuse disposal systems  such as  sanitary landfills ,  emission control systems  for automobiles,  sedimentation tanks  in  sewerage systems , the  electrostatic precipitation  of impurities from industrial gas, or the practice of  recycling . For full treatment of major areas of pollution control,  see   air pollution control ,  wastewater treatment ,  solid-waste management , and  hazardous-waste management . Next to the  conservation of species  from the loss of  biological diversity , the control of  pollution  is the conservation problem of greatest magnitude; it might even be argued that pollution control is more urgent a...