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Plastic pollution has the potential to poison animals, which can then adversely affect human food supplies. [ 161 ] [ 162 ] Plastic pollution has been described as being highly detrimental to large marine mammals , described in the book Introduction to Marine Biology as posing the "single greatest threat" to them. [ 163 ]
Animal agriculture worldwide encompasses 83% of farmland (but only accounts for 18% of the global calorie intake), and the direct consumption of animals as well as over-harvesting them is causing environmental degradation through habitat alteration, biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution, and trophic interactions. [174]
Human activities affect marine life and marine habitats through overfishing, habitat loss, the introduction of invasive species, ocean pollution, ocean acidification and ocean warming. These impact marine ecosystems and food webs and may result in consequences as yet unrecognised for the biodiversity and continuation of marine life forms. [3]
Plastic pollution has also greatly negatively affected our environment. "The pollution is significant and widespread, with plastic debris found on even the most remote coastal areas and in every marine habitat". [77] This information tells us about how much of a consequential change plastic pollution has made on the ocean and even the coasts.
While marine pollution can be obvious, as with the marine debris shown above, it is often the pollutants that cannot be seen that cause most harm.. Marine pollution occurs when substances used or spread by humans, such as industrial, agricultural and residential waste, particles, noise, excess carbon dioxide or invasive organisms enter the ocean and cause harmful effects there.
This form of pollution can lead to many problems. One is the degradation of aquatic ecosystems. Another is spreading water-borne diseases when people use polluted water for drinking or irrigation. [154] Water pollution also reduces the ecosystem services such as drinking water provided by the water resource.
Levels of air pollution rose during the Industrial Revolution, sparking the first modern environmental laws to be passed in the mid-19th century. The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement) is a social movement that aims to protect the natural world from harmful environmental practices in order to create ...
Biological pollution (impacts or bio pollution) is the impact of humanity's actions on the quality of aquatic and terrestrial environment. Specifically, biological pollution is the introduction of non-indigenous and invasive species, [ 1 ] otherwise known as Invasive Alien Species (IAS).