Freshwater Contamination: Sources and Hazards to Aquatic Biota

Abstract

Water is an essential compound for supporting the biota on earth. There are various sources of water to support the life in freshwater ecosystems. Freshwater ecosystems play magical role as they provide services to support life process in living creatures. But, growing population, urbanization, industrialization put drastic pressure on the freshwater ecosystems, with the result altered the quality scenario of freshwaters by adding huge quantities of contamination. Water contaminations not only degrade the quality of freshwater, but simultaneously pose harmful risks to the whole environment. The chemical substances in freshwater ecosystem can't be neutralized easily due to their complex structure and have great potential to remain intact in any kind of environments. These substances nowadays are continuously added into the freshwater ecosystem on daily basis by way of discharging untreated domestic, industrial and agricultural wastewater. Most of these substances get accumulated in the bottom sediments and very minute concentration in the form of organic and inorganic constituents remain either in suspended form or solution in liquid medium of freshwater ecosystem. Presences of these kinds of pollutants in freshwater ecosystem have long-term impacts on aquatic and associated biota. Therefore, need of an hour is to monitor the quality of freshwater ecosystem on regular basis and focus should be given to the treatment of effluents prior to its discharge into the freshwater ecosystem.