Industrial pollution
Topic: Manufacturing Industries of India: Location and Distribution · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 6 "Manufacturing Industries"
Meaning
Industrial pollution is the harm that factories do to the air, water, land and environment, including noise. Thermal power plants are among the polluters. Industry helps the economy grow, but NCERT stresses that the damage it causes cannot be ignored.
- Air: sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and dust come from chemical and paper units, brick kilns, refineries and smelters.
- Water: dyes, acids, salts, lead and mercury come from paper, chemical, textile, tannery and electroplating units.
- Thermal: hot water drained into rivers harms fish and other water life.
- Land: dumped waste seeps into groundwater.
Every litre of waste water pollutes about eight times as much fresh water.
Example
In Bhopal in 1984, a toxic gas leaked from a factory and killed thousands of people. In Kanpur, waste full of chromium from leather tanneries pollutes the Ganga.
Don't confuse with
- Thermal pollution: this is only one kind of industrial pollution. It means warming water bodies with hot waste water, not adding chemicals to them.