Can Fertilizers Contribute To Water Pollution?

Farmers across the world spread millions of tones of fertilizers on their land each year. This provides plants with the essential elements they need to grow well, such as nitrogen from ammonium nitrate fertilizer. These fertilizers must be soluble in water so that plants can draw up the nutrients through their roots. However, because it is soluble, the fertilizer can be washed from the soil in heavy rain. We say that it is reached out of the soil.

These fertilizers drain from groundwater into rivers and streams. Once in a river, the fertilizer promotes rapid growth of large on the surface of the water. This stops light reaching other water plants, and also reduces the amount of dissolved oxygen; with out it, they die.

Of course, plants produce oxygen when they photosynthesise. So levels of dissolved oxygen increases as the plants increases. The large thrive at first, but when they die, micro-organisms have a feast feeding on and decomposing the dead algae. The micro-organisms multiply rapidly with so much food available, and their activity uses up the oxygen in the water—unfortunately for the fish.

Fertilizers can also find their way into our drinking water. Fertilizers may cause stomach cancers other harmful diseases.

Some  times   it   can   or  not.