Types of pollution

The earth is being polluted by man-made activities and by natural forces (Khan & Ghouri, 2011). Human encounter a lots of problems in their life. One of the main problems is pollution. Pollution occurs either through man-made such as illegal logging, open burning and waste dumping or natural forces like tsunami, landslides and earthquake. Pollution has become a global issues and its capability to lead to severe health problems (Khan & Ghouri, 2011). According to Thompson (2002) “today, people impacted by pollution are demanding more from the polluters than mere compliance with regulations and permits; they want compensation for mental anguish and emotional distress” (p. 31). Therefore, pollution can be differentiated into three major types such as thermal, air and water pollutions.

The first type of pollution is thermal pollution. Thermal pollution can be defined as changing of temperature of a natural water bodies such as lake, river and ocean. Thermal pollution occurs is due to the amount of waste heat traveling in the form of hot water discharge through the coal-oil-fired generators and atomic energy plants (Kumar, 1993). As discussed by Gour (2013) the major factor that contribute to the occurrence of thermal pollution is the coal-fired power plants where cool water discharge from a river, lake or ocean process through the condensers, where heat is absorbed. The resulting hot water, then release back to the body of water. Due to rapid change of temperature in water bodies, it leads to “thermal shock” which kills all the aquatic life that has been adapted to live in a stable temperature (Kumar, 1993). In addition, the higher temperature favors the growth of diatoms, green algae and blue-green algae, which harm to the ecosyste...

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...otosynthetic aquatic plants.

To prevent this issue from getting worse, it is necessary to take certain effort to overcome it. First and foremost, human do not dump the waste materials such as plastics, polystyrene and aluminium into the river or ocean because it is very difficult and take a long period to decompose these substances. Human need to think before they simply discard the chemicals and toxins into the water as these are harmful to all the marine life. Moreover, to reduce the harm of the oil spill, the use of chemical oil dispersants is highly suggested. In order to remove large amounts of oil spills from the sea surface, the chemicals are applied directly to the oil. Dispersants function better when the ocean has moderate waves than flat and calm waves because wave energy make oil slick to decompose into small droplet and dilute instantly (Casper, 2007).