Fertilizers and Pollution

Fertilizers and Pollution

Some of the fertilizers have washed off the lands through irrigation, rainfall and drainage, into rivers and streams. There they can seriously disturb the aquatic ecosystem. Depletion of dissolved oxygen caused by excessive algae growths can bring disaste or death to fish and other aquatic biota. Excessive and indiscriminate application of inorganic fertilizers often leads to accumulation of nitrates in water. When such waters are drunk by living beings, these nitrates are reduced to the toxic nitrites by intestinal bacteria. Nitrites can cause a serious disease known as nethnohlobinemia. The disease can inflict serious damage to respiratory and vascular systems and may even cause suffocation.

The indiscriminate and excessive use of fertilizers can have serious and adverse ecological consequences, especially in aquatic ecosystems and ground water resources. The world’s ecosystems form a sort of continuous and interlinked network. As such, the materials lost by one ecosystem may spell a gain for its neighbours. Hence fertilizers when applied in excess, leach from crop fields into water bodies, affecting the down-stream aquatic life.