Poison Runoff

If you think that industrial polluters are the main source of water pollution, think again.  By some estimates, poison runoff accounts for as much as 80% of water pollution in the U.S.

Most of us contribute to poison runoff every day. Rainfall, snow melt, or irrigation runoff moves across the ground, and the water picks up whatever people have left in its path.

Lawn chemicals, garbage, car wash detergents, construction debris, etc. Asphalt and concrete from streets, driveways, and parking lots, can contain oil, grease, lead, fallout from grinding engine parts, rusting exhaust systems, and abraded brake linings.

Rains come along and wash this debris into the storm drains, where contaminants are transported to the nearest stream, lake, estuary, or aquifer.

Agriculture is the biggest contributor to the problem.  44 states report ground water contamination caused by runoff from farms and ranches. Sediments, organic matter, and bacteria flow from fields and pastures by the ton. Livestock wastes have tainted municipal water supplies.

In 1993, runoff carried a parasite called cryptosporidium to the drinking water in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sickening thousands of people and killing a hundred who suffered from immune-system deficiencies. Manure was among the suspected sources.

Half the nation's drinking water wells are reported to contain nitrates resulting from agricultural fertilizers. Excessive nitrates can deplete oxygen in the bloodstream's of infants and result in a kind of slow suffocation known as blue baby syndrome. Herbicides that are suspected carcinogens have shown up in tap water.

Vaporous plumes from automobiles and smokestack industries (power plants, incinerators, cement kilns, etc.) are well regulated as sources of air pollution--but can act as furtive water polluters. Airborne sulphur and and nitrogen mix with rain. The dirty rain contains dioxin and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls). Dioxin is said to be carcinogenic and is emitted in the process of incinerating municipal, medical, and hazardous wastes. PCBs can likewise be cancer causing.