Thermal Pollution

Thermal pollution can be simply explained as the addition of surplus heat to water and ejecting it back to the water bodies. So how does it happen? Well, numerous industries take water from natural water resources for their industrial purposes. Maximum of this water is used as coolant as it is used to cool down the machines of any factory or plant.

Afterwards, this used water with altered and much high temperature is ejected back to the natural resources including lakes, ponds, seas, etc. This causes sudden increase in temperature of natural water bodies too. The altered water also creates disturbance in the oxygen level of water bodies. This in turn, harms the marine life and local ecosystems. Therefore, thermal pollution caused in water by spilling back the industrial waste and used water in it, causing adverse effects, is known as thermal pollution.

Thermal pollution is not only caused by the hot water but also by the cold water that is discharged by various industries into the rivers or seas containing warm water.