Water Analysis is Essential for Potable Water

Over two thirds of Earth's surface is covered by water; less than a third is taken up by land. As Earth's population continues to grow, people are putting ever-increasing pressure on the planet's water resources. In a sense, our oceans, rivers, and other inland waters are being "squeezed" by human activities, not so they take up less room, but so their quality is reduced. Poorer water quality means water pollution. As industrialization has spread around the globe, so the problem of pollution has spread with it. When Earth's population was much smaller, no one believed pollution would ever present a serious problem. It was once popularly believed that the oceans were far too big to pollute. Today, with around 7 billion people on the planet, it has become apparent that there are limits. Pollution is one of the signs that humans have exceeded those limits. Water pollution can be defined in many ways. Usually, it means one or more substances have built up in water to such an extent that they cause problems for animals or people. Not all of Earth's water is available on its surface, however. A great deal of water is held in underground rock structures known as aquifers, which we cannot see and seldom think about. Water stored underground in aquifers is known as groundwater. Aquifers feed our rivers and supply much of our drinking water. They too can become polluted. Groundwater pollution is much less obvious than surface-water pollution, but is no less of a problem. Surface waters and groundwater are the two types of water resources that pollution affects. There are also two different ways in which pollution can occur. If pollution comes from a single location, such as a discharge pipe attached to a factory, it is known as point-source pollution. A great deal of water pollution happens not from one single source but from many different scattered sources. This is called nonpoint-source pollution. Sometimes pollution that enters the environment in one place has an effect hundreds or even thousands of miles away. This is known as transboundary pollution. Some people believe pollution is an inescapable result of human activity: they argue that if we want to have development. Fortunately, not everyone agrees with this view. One reason people have woken up to the problem of pollution is that it brings costs of its own that undermine any economic benefits that come about by polluting. Pollution matters because it harms the environment on which people depend. The environment is not something distant and separate from our lives. The environment is everything that surrounds us that gives us life and health. Destroying the environment ultimately reduces the quality of our own lives and that, most selfishly, is why pollution should matter to all of us.