Thermal Pollution Essay

Running Head: Thermal Pollution

Riffling Thermal Pollution

Phoebus Tsai

Camas High School

Riffling Thermal Pollution Thermal pollution is harmful to aquatic ecosystems. They are caused when cool river water are drawn from the water source, run through a power plant, and then discharged back into the same source. This now heated water causes all kinds of mischief and damages to the health of the organisms in the aquatic environment and the environment itself. In an experiment, Gisela Lannig and Inna Sokolova of the University of North Carolina in Charlotte incubated oysters at one of three temperatures, 20°C, 24°C, and 28°C. The differing temperatures of the environment each group of oysters are exposed to in the incubator simulate thermal pollution in the oysters’ natural habitat. What they found was that "the rate of oxygen use, which can be an indicator of physical stress, was three times as high in oysters kept at the warmest temperature as it was in those kept at the coolest" (Raloff, 2005). This reveals that their environment could stress aquatic organisms with just a minute change in the temperature of the ecosystem. This stress could cause the health of an organism to deteriorate or even possibly death.

The result was not good news for oysters that were in the warmest environment. Three weeks after the beginning of cadmium exposure, half of the oysters in the warmest environment were dead and those exposed at 24°C lost 6% of their population (Raloff, 2005). The good news is that all of the oysters in the coolest temperature survived. This could mean that the oysters are prepared for fluctuation in water temperature. However, if the water temperature was suddenly raised too high, there would be no time for the animals to adjust and the environment would then therefore be harmful to their