Water Pollution
As technology improves, scientists are able to detect more pollutants, and at smaller concentrations, in Earth’s freshwater bodies. Containing traces of contaminants ranging from birth control pills and sunscreen to pesticides and petroleum, our planet's lakes, rivers, streams, and groundwater are often a chemical cocktail.
Beyond synthetic pollution, freshwater is also the end point for biological waste, in the form of human sewage, animal excrement, and rainwater runoff flavored by nutrient-rich fertilizers from yards and farms. These nutrients find their way through river systems into seas, sometimes creating coastal ocean zones void of oxygen and therefore aquatic life and making the connection between land and sea painfully obvious.
Nowadays, In developing countries, 70 percent of industrial wastes are dumped untreated into waters, polluting the usable water supply, and also approximately 22 million tons of fertilizers and hazardous chemicals are used each year and dumped into the water (ocean, sea, rivers and lakes).