All About Water

Thermal pollution occurs when a body of water’s temperature is changed because of human activities.  In nature, even a slight change in temperature can have dramatic changes on the ecosystem; it can cause some life to die off and others to proliferate until they take over.

Where Does Thermal Pollution Come From?

Nuclear power plants and other industries use water as a coolant.  In other words, large quantities of water are essentially utilized as a heat sink.  Therefore, after being used, the water is usually discharged back into the body of water from which it came (This may be the ocean, a lake or a river).  As a result, when the water gets back into the system, it is often still heated and raises the ambient temperature of the body of water, or the area where it is being dumped.

What Effect Does Thermal Pollution Have on the Earth?

If you have ever owned a fish tank, you have probably been warned about thermal shock. When you are transferring fish from one tank to another, you have to allow water to normalize to the same temperature. As a result, if you suddenly move a fish to a new tank, the slight change in water temperature might be enough to shock the fish’s system, cause it to develop a disease and even kill it.

Unfortunately, this process is what happens in thermal pollution. For example, warmer water affects spawning cycles and can kill young fish. Also, temperature changes may alter the dissolved oxygen levels, causing death in many organisms whose enzyme systems are set to function at a certain temperature. Finally, yet another major change that takes place in warmer water is an increase in decomposition, leading to an abundance of organic nutrients in the water. This causes an increase in algae (and subsequently massive algae blooms), depleting even more oxygen from the water and suffocating other life.

What Effect Does Thermal Pollution Have on Humans?

Because of the increase in bacteria and algae, thermal pollution renders bodies of freshwater unsuitable for human consumption. For example, eating seafood contaminated with algae can cause illness.

Also, thermal pollution can damage commercial and recreational fishing/shrimping industries by decreasing the amount of marine life in the contaminated area.

Ultimately, the financial cost of clean-up and rehabilitation of the affected area is damaging to local economies.  As a result, time and effort has to be expended to create laws and regulations about thermal pollution and to monitor companies to make sure that these laws and regulations are followed.

 

On April 20, 2010, an explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon oil-drilling rig, killing eleven workers and injuring several others. As a result of this explosion, 750 million gallons of oil poured into the Gulf of Mexico before workers were able to plug the rig. Although the Deepwater Horizon explosion is the most recent major oil spill, others are etched into our memory also, like the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. Oil in the marine ecosystem devastates local wildlife. Photos of animals coated in crude oil open our eyes to the extent to which our dependence on oil damages our oceans and earth.

Where Does Oil Come From?

Although major oil spills make the front pages of our newspapers, major oil spills are not the only oil spills that contribute to marine pollution. Small oil spills happen all the time. In addition to oil from major spills, 380 million gallons of oil pour into our waters every year from other sources. Everyday activities that use oil, like driving, heating, shipping, and running machinery, drip oil into our waters. When oil is spilled onto the ground, it eventually gets washed into streams, bays and oceans as rainwater runoff. Some oil seeps into the ocean naturally, through seafloor springs. When these naturally occurring wells are exploited for deepwater drilling, nearby oil seepage increases.

How Does Oil Pollution Affect the Earth?

When oil trickles into the ocean, it can eventually dissipate over time. Some of the chemicals evaporate, and some are broken down by bacteria or sunlight. What’s left of oil is diluted by currents. When oil seeps into places like marshes, lagoons, and other wetlands, however, it mixes into the sediment and soil and can last for years, or even decades. Oil doesn’t dissolve in water. Instead, it float atop the water’s surface, coating anything it comes in contact with, or mixes with organic debris and sinks to the bottom, becoming a part of the sediment. The chemicals in oil can poison marine life, endangering animal populations. Plant life cannot grow well in sediment that is mixed with oil. When oil coats the water, it prevents an efficient transfer of oxygen into the water, and can suffocate marine life.

How Does Oil Pollution Affect Humans?

Oil pollution is very costly to humans. Oil spills require an expensive clean-up and damage fishing, shrimping and other sea-dependent industries. In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill, many Gulf locals with sea-dependent jobs lost their livelihoods. Tourism is stunted by visible signs of marine pollution, causing more financial loss. Environments can take years to rebound. More immediately, oil worsens the health of the people who have to clean it up or who live near it. Long-term exposure to oil can cause neurological, respiratory and hematological problems. Some have also reported oil-caused psychological stress.

The introduction of plastic created a revolution. Lightweight, inexpensive and highly durable, plastic products are meant to be disposable and are tossed without a second thought. But these throw-away items can take centuries to degrade and remain in the ecosystem all throughout that time. When plastics and other garbage enter the marine ecosystem, they do great damage to the life that calls the ocean home. Swirling in the North Pacific is an area the size of Texas called “The Pacific Trash Vortex.” For every kilogram of natural plankton, six kilograms of plastic exist in this vortex. The area is filled with dead fish, sea mammals and birds. Unfortunately, it’s not the only one.

Where Do Plastics in the Environment Come From?

Humans produce about 100 million tons of plastic every year. About 10 percent of that winds up in the ocean. Ships and platforms produce 20 percent of this, and the rest comes from the land. The larger items are broken apart into smaller pieces and particles through the action of the wind and waves, which allows the garbage to spread even further. The plastic then washes up on beaches and accumulates in areas where currents are slower. While much of the plastic and debris floats, some eventually sinks and builds up in ocean beds.

What Effect Does Plastic Pollution Have on the Earth?

Marine animals including fish, mammals and birds eat the plastics. They cannot be digested and remain in the animals’ bodies, where they can be fatal. One dead turtle that was found in Hawaii had over one thousand pieces of plastic throughout its digestive system. Turtles in particular are very vulnerable to plastic ingestion — they cannot tell the difference between a floating plastic bag and the jellyfish that they eat. Over a million birds and hundreds of thousands of other animals are estimated to die every year because of plastic ingestion. Additionally, plastics can absorb other chemicals which can make them even more highly toxic to any animal that eats them. Other discarded items like nets entangle animals and kill them. Plastics and other debris provide a place for small organisms to gather and can then float on currents to other parts of the ocean, introducing invasive species that can cause a great deal of damage to the local ecosystem.

What Effect Does Plastic Pollution Have on Humans?

When plastic pollution waste builds up, it clogs waterways. For instance, Bangladesh suffered severe flooding in the late 1990s and plastics were a major contributor. Since then, a complete ban on plastic bags has gone into effect in that region. Cleaning up the mess is costly. So how we do solve this problem that we have created? Avoid using disposable plastic products like grocery bags and soda bottles. Participate in a local cleanup day. Bring your own cloth grocery bags when you go shopping. Don’t buy bottled water. If you can’t avoid buying plastic products, make sure that they are appropriately recycled. While plastic is a major problem for the health of waterways around the world, this problem is fortunately a very solvable one.

 

Geothermal power is enjoying a quiet renaissance. The same concept of producing megawatts of energy from today’s industrial plants also fueled Roman baths and 15th century French villages. President Obama’s 2009 Recovery Act committed $350 million for research and development of geothermal power, prioritizing it as a strategic, U.S. renewable energy source. Geothermal power can provide both commercial electricity and residential heating and cooling. 

What Is Geothermal Power?

Heat from the earth’s interior supplies geothermal power. Geothermal heat originates from decaying radioactive elements lodged deep in the earth’s core. Commercial drilling pulls the heat through plants designed for production and distribution. Clean, renewable, and sustainable, geothermal power is gaining momentum in both U.S. and global markets.

Where We Find Geothermal Power

Most geothermal exploration and production takes place in the western United States. Technologies target sites where hot magma is close to the surface is heating ground water to baseline temperatures beyond 212 degrees Fahrenheit.

How We Get Geothermal Power

Exploratory drilling helps us locate prime geothermal sites. A hole is drilled into hot basement rock and water is injected into this hole to initiate a circulation loop. We thereby extract continuous heat from the earth’s interior. Hot water is pumped to the surface and mixed with a working fluid, producing vapor absorbed by a turbine-generator. The vapor circulated through the turbine produces electricity. Recycled geothermal water closes the circulation loop, creating a continuous cycle of energy.

Pros of Geothermal Power

Geothermal power facilities require the smallest footprint of any large energy source. Geothermal technology bypasses nuclear and coal power, delivering a clean, renewable energy source without producing radioactive waste or carbon dioxide emissions. Geothermal power is abundant, providing an inexhaustible energy source for the entire planet. Its process is simple and every geothermal plant built in the past century is still in production.

Cons of Geothermal Power

However, current drilling capabilities are costly and limited to strategic hot spots. Exploratory drilling can induce micro-seismic events, although most are never felt on the Earth’s surface. Geothermal sites are typically located in rural spots that lack sufficient transport infrastructure.

Water and Geothermal Power

Geologists, engineers, and drillers spend considerable time exploring and testing for ideal geothermal reservoirs. Known as production wells, these reservoirs contain the hot water and steam that pumps to the earth’s surface, delivering the force necessary to spin the turbine generators, which produce electricity. Used water flows back down an injection well and is recycled.

Geothermal Pollution

Geothermal power plants do not burn fossil fuels to operate, and therefore do not emit carbon. Air quality around geothermal plants meets EPA standards. Most toxic gases released from production wells are condensed and injected back into the ground. The geothermal byproducts silica and sulfur dioxide can be processed and sold for commercial use.

In today’s society, many of us have become accustomed to the sight of birds and marine animals struggling for life on an oil-slicked beach after a massive oil spill. We have also become more aware of the devastating effects that automobile emissions have on the atmosphere.  Some may even recall the hellish image of burning oil wells in Kuwait spewing black clouds into the sky after the Gulf War.  However, one danger of the petroleum industry has not received much attention in recent years: the petroleum pollutants created by industrial production and refinement.

Toxins Galore

For crude oil to be converted into its many useful forms, such as gasoline, diesel, and kerosene, it must be processed extensively in large chemical refineries. These refineries are full of toxic chemicals that, especially in under-regulated third-world nations, often leak into local atmospheres and water systems. Each year the petroleum-refining industry produces hundreds of millions of pounds of pollutants, pollutants that consist of over one hundred different toxic chemicals, many of which find their way into the air, water, and land. Some of the petroleum pollutants released by refineries include sulfuric and hydrofluoric acid, ammonia, chlorine, benzine, lead, and mercury, all of which harm human health.

Air, Water and Land

When concentrated in high enough levels, these petroleum pollutants harm and disrupt ecosystems and human communities. Runoff from refineries and unlined waste ponds harms–or even destroys–local ecosystems whenever it enters the local water system. Often little can be done to undo the harm caused by this pollution. Sometimes the pollutants directly affect agriculture and livestock, harming animals and local economies, as well as humans themselves. Unprotected populations near petroleum facilities often see higher rates of cancer, dermatitis, fungal infection, headaches, and nausea.

Peripheral Damage

Transporting products to and from refineries often results in massive spills, which are also very damaging to local environments. Additionally, the creation of refineries and the roadways to and from these facilities has been responsible for the irreparable destruction of huge tracts of virgin wilderness, including the highly threatened Amazon Rainforest. As petroleum production continues, levels of petroleum pollutants will only increase and, in some areas, will eventually reach levels at which massive environmental damage may become irreversible.

The Next Step

The best thing that the average citizen can do to help stop the problems associated with petroleum pollutants is to become aware of these problems. This awareness alone will impact how you use petroleum and its products and will help you to inform others. You may also take further steps through donation or volunteer work to help mitigate the damage already caused; however, the threat of petroleum pollutants will only continue as long as the petroleum industry remains profitable.

In The End