APES Unit 6 Water Pollution

Basic pH

8-14

Biomagnification

Accumulation of pollutants at successive levels of the food chain

What is the largest single use of freshwater?

Agricultural

How do POPs cause harm in the environment?

Are soluble in fat, so they accumulate in an organisms' fatty tissues

What pollutant is most likely to be released into groundwater supplies without human intervention?

Arsenic

What happens to sludge from a sewage treatment plant?

Can be deposited into landfill, can be incinerated, can be used as fertilizer

Where does drinking water come from?

Comes mostly from groundwater

What is a common characteristic of lakes undergoing cultural eutrophication?

Decreased levels of oxygen throughout the water column

What is HAB (Harmful Algal Blooms) caused by?

Explosive growth of harmful algae from sewage and agricultural runoff

The Clean Water Act

Federal Law setting a national goal of making all natural surface water fit for fishing and swimming by 1983, banned polluted discharge into surface water and required the metals be removed from waste

How can we prevent non-point pollution?

From planting buffers and locating feedlots away from steeply sloped land, flood zones, and surface water

Cultural eutrophication

Human activities accelerate the input of plant nutrients (mostly nitrate- and phosphate-containing effluents)

In a river ecosystem, dissolved oxygen concentrations drop quickly downstream from a point-source input of organic matter into the river. This effect is due to

Increasing bacterial activity as organic matter decays

What body of water is most susceptible to pollutants?

Lakes because the water is not mixed well and has little flow

Acidic pH

Less than 7

What heavy metal is associated with burning coal?

Mercury

What substance is released as a result of manufacturing plastics?

PCBs

Nonpoint source pollution

Pollution that comes from many sources rather than from a single, specific site

The removal of waste material from raw sewage using physical processes is called

Primary sewage treatment

What act creates maximum containment standards for community water supplies?

Safe Drinking Water Act

The removal of waste material from raw sewage using biological processes is called

Secondary sewage treatment

The U.S. Clean Water Act

Sets standards for allowed levels of key water pollutants and requires polluters to get permits

Point source pollution

Specific location (drain pipes, ditches, sewer lines)

What kind of pollution is a problem in developing countries?

Stream pollution from discharges of untreated sewage

Fecal coliform

Test used to indicate the likely presence of disease-causing bacteria in water

Bioaccumulation

The accumulation of a substance, such as a toxic chemical, in various tissues of a living organism.

Oxygen sag curve

The curve obtained when the concentration of dissolved oxygen in a river into which sewage or some other pollutant has been discharged is plotted against the distance downstream from the sewage outlet

Eutrophication

The natural nutrient enrichment of a shallow lake, estuary or slow moving stream, mostly from runoff of plant nutrients from the surrounding land

Advanced or tertiary sewage treatment

The type of sewage treatment designed to remove materials such as heavy metals and other contaminants

What is the purpose of chlorination in the wastewater treatment process?

To kill disease-causing organisms

Thermal water pollution

Usually from cooling power plants and other industries that raises water temperature which in turn has adverse effects on water systems

A stream that has a pH of 6.0 is

Weakly acidic

Traditionally, floodplains were very important for development of human habitation because

When rivers overflow they deposit nutrient-rich sediment for agriculture

Neutral pH

pH of 7