Pollutants

Who amongst us is fully aware of devastation of pollutants. We all directly or indirectly keep falling prey to pollutants in one way or another. Unfortunately most of us are not aware of them and simply know about pollution and not about the pollutants. The root cause of every type of pollution is its pollutants which usually are more than many and keep damaging our environment and eventually make our lives more miserable.

Types of pollutants

The pollutants are all types of substances which cause any kind of pollution. Various gases are pollutants of air pollution, so many poisonous chemicals create land pollution and many elements and compounds bring on water pollution. They may be physical, chemical or both. These may be in all the three forms of matter; gas, liquid and solid. All the products of waste or their by-products are pollutants.

Most of the times a balanced quantity of various substance is good for nature but their excess or shortage may convert them into pollutants. Like soil needs a good balance of phosphate and nitrates to maintain fertility but their excess is harmful for its fertility and also cause water pollution especially in ground water.

On the basis of their form, existence and natural disposal pollutants are classified into different types. On the basis of their form pollutants are primary and secondary. The main primary pollutant is DDT which maintains its form in the environment. The secondary pollutants do not maintain their form in environment like nitrate which takes its form due to reaction between two primary pollutants such as hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides.

On the basis of existences, pollutants are classified into two categories; qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative pollutants are the result of human activities like DDT and fungicides etc. The quantitative pollutants come into existences in environment by themselves due to any mishap in the balance of overall composition of the physical environment. Its examples are like CO and CO2 etc.

Pollutants can be biodegradable and non-biodegradable on the basis of their existence. The biodegradable pollutants can be wiped away gradually by various micro organisms while non-biodegradable pollutants are constant threat to environment and could not be degraded like DDT, glass, plastics, phenols, radioactive substances, metal containers etc.

Conclusion

Pollutants of whatever category constantly harm our dear environment because they are cause of various forms of pollution which is worst enemy of our natural environment. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt such a way of life individually and collectively to leave minimum chances to let the pollutants grow or stay put and our every act should help mitigate their effects on environment.