• Question: How does pollution affect the environment and how long does it take

    Asked by anon-177550 to Urslaan, Nicola, Helen, Becky, Andrew on 12 Jun 2018. This question was also asked by anon-177568.
    • Photo: Andrew Singer

      Andrew Singer answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      Your question can not be easily answered as there are many many different ways to pollute the environment: air, water, soil. Each source of pollution can ‘pollute’ the environment the moment it is released. Pollution becomes a problem for humans and the environment when the concentration of the pollutant reaches critical thresholds, such as the concentration that begins to cause antimicrobial resistance in rivers (antibiotic pollution in sewage) or asthma in children (cigarette smoking).

    • Photo: Nicola Reid

      Nicola Reid answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      I tend to deal with pollution that has affected soil or water stored in the ground. Quite often this has come from old factories or land uses in the past that didn’t contain or store their chemicals very well. Sometimes pollution can come from accidents where for example a petrol lorry accidentally spills its entire tank immediately other times it could happen in a factory where a little bit of chemical has dripped out of a tank over many many years.

      How long pollution takes depends on where its spilled, how much of it there is and what kind of chemical the pollution is as they all have different properties such as their ability to dissolve in water or break down over time.

      It also depends on what the ground is like underneath. If its clayey soil or rock the pollution it might not go anywhere but if it’s a sandy soil or rock the pollution might be able to soak straight into the ground.

      Some pollutants are so horrible they could possibly kill fish in a river instantly but other pollutants need to be flowing into a river for a long long time before they do any damage.

      Its a very very complex combination of factors that determines how long it takes and how severe the pollution is.

    • Photo: Urslaan Chohan

      Urslaan Chohan answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      Hello fortnite sweat! Interesting username. Pollution affects the environment in many ways. One way is global warming, which is caused by carbon dioxide gas being released into the environment. Another is acid rain, which forms from carbon dioxide, sulphurous oxide and nitrous oxide being released. Habitats get damaged through these, and cause natural disasters. Changes in the temperature cause plants to lose their sense of time. It generally takes years, but since the rise of machines and technology, the damage to the environment has increased massively.

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