Water Pollution: Impact on Aquatic Life and Human Health

Water is an essential part of life for any living organism in the world. People use water every day to drink, do daily housework, or to bathe in; while animals use water to survive. Because of the doings of humans, the water that is so essential to all organisms’ well being is being polluted. The water drink and use every day may have oil from large petroleum companies spilling into it. Debris from sewer plants float into the ocean when they overflow. Even prescription pills are contaminating the water. Not only is the water affecting the humans that drink it but also affects the aquatic life. Aquatic species may have problems reproducing which disrupts the whole food chain and biodiversity web of life. How water becomes contaminated should

Water is being contaminated by human carelessness and actions. According to Abrahm Lustgarten and Nick Kusnetz in their article “Fracking Contaminates Drinking Water”, in 2011 the Environmental Protection Agency stated that fracking was connected to water pollution (Lustgarten and Kusnetz). Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulic fracturing happens when people drill deep into the Earth horizontally to get natural gas that is in between shale layers. The fluids used in hydraulic fracking are water and fracking fluids. Within fracking fluids are 2 chemicals that are linked to cause cancer, benzene and 2-butoxyethanol (Lustgarten and Kusnetz). People do not want to drink water that will make them sick. Fracking also causes water to be contaminated that is up to 1,000 feet below the surface of the Earth (Lusgarten and Kusnetz). Fracking causes contamination deep down into the

Aquatic species are having these chemicals and debris forced upon them against their will. As stated in the article “Combined Sewer Overflows” the treatment plants cannot handle the income of water and the trash in it, so they push the water and the trash out into the ocean (“Combined Sewer Overflows”). Because humans are not able to handle the event aquatic species are being tangled up in or choking on all the garbage and trash from humans. Oil spills are another case were animals are the victims of human actions. "As little as one part of oil per million parts of water can be detrimental to the reproduction and growth of fish, crustaceans, and plankton” (“Threats to Aquatic Environments”). Even the slightest amount of oil will affect the life of any aquatic species. Oil spills also block sunlight, because oil is lighter that water the oil just sits on top of the water (“Threats to Aquatic Environments”). When the oil sits like this it blocks the sun from aquatic plants and kills them. Another problem caused is when aquatic plants are dying they are sinking down to the floor of the water, suffocating the other organisms that cannot move quickly or at all. Oil spills have been devastating to many species for years. Since the oil spill of 1989 a species was so devastated that today the species is still trying to recover from the spill (“Threats to Aquatic Environments”). Oil spills are a major reason that species