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How Does Nitrate Affects Drinking Water Quality?

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When talking about water quality, many of the given factors can change what you’re given to drink. Nitrates, phosphates, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, temperature, and pH levels all affect the drinking water quality. Nitrate is very harmful to younger kids and infants if too much is drank. If a baby 6 months or under drinks over the MCL (maximum contaminant level), the young child could get very sick or die from the over drank nitrate. Any person older than 6 months could become ill, but shouldn’t be anything more than a flu-like sickness. Plants use nitrates to. If animals drink too much nitrates, they will develop a common infant’s disease called methemoglobinemia. Nitrate is produced by the decomposing ammonia created by fish waste. Best …show more content…

There are multiple types of phosphates, including orthophosphates, organically bound phosphates, and finally, metaphosphates, or polyphosphates which come from three different areas. Orthophosphates come from naturally processed materials and are found in sewages. Polyphosphates are used to treat boiling water and help with detergents, but turn into orthophosphates upon reaching the water.The organically formed phosphates are very significant in nature. Organically formed phosphates come from organic pesticides that have phosphates in them. The Team had no results for phosphates. (USGS, …show more content…

The more turbidity in a body of water, the more opaque, or cloudy, the water will appear to be. Turbidity is also a form of an expression of light amount being scattered by water materials when light shines. The more scattered light there is in an example, the higher the turbidity is. A lower turbidity would makes vision much stronger for any aquatic life, while plants get more sunlight to perform photosynthesis. Swimming with lower turbidity would help with someone’s vision, while a higher turbidity would decrease someone’s vision. Managing turbidity is nearly impossible. The Stream Team got results of 10 NTU, which is a near perfect water quality. (USGS,

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