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Pollution

Another major threat to natural environment is pollution. Different types of pollution affect us:
air pollution, water pollution and soil pollution. Pollution sources can be direct, from a single point
source, or diffuse, the pollutant is spread across a certain area, and by bio-chemical processes
gets concentrated in another area, animal, plant, etc. The pollution source location and the
damages’ location most of the times do not match, cause the pollutants can travel by air or water.

All forms of pollution have negative impacts on biodiversity, but currently the main pollution
problem has to deal with nutrient loading (nitrogen and phosphorus are the most prominent
pollutants). Nutrient loading can cause ecosystems disfunction, which leads to biodiversity loss.

On land, in Europe, the biggest pollution sources are Agriculture, agrochemical toxics, and
Transport, gas pollutants.

On the ocean the biggest pollution source is plastic waste. Plastic have been used a lot in the past
decades, and a significant part of if being single-use plastics, therefore, a lot of waste has been
generated. Another particularity of plastic, is that is very resistant, and it will take around 450
years to be completely degraded. In meanwhile, plastics break in microscopic pieces, and go with
the air or water flow. Oceans have been accumulating plastics, from microplastics to macro
plastics (visible pieces), posing a major threat to biodiversity, since, besides plastic can physically
damage animals, it will interfere with animals and plants physiologic systems, since plastic
molecules can mimic hormones.

Image 17. Different pollution forms and sources.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the
views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the

information contained therein.