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The Cause of Frog Mutation and Population Decline

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It is easy person to point their finger at big industrial and chemical plants and blame them for the cause of so much pollution in our water. When taking a closer look, those same people pointing the finger are equally contributing to the pollution of our water supply and are also to blame. This person could be a friend, family member, classmate, or even you. Even if people do not think that they have a part in this, most do. A variety of data has shown traces of pharmaceuticals used by every day humans in our water. As well as pharmaceuticals there is a presence of chemical contaminants, mainly pesticides that are causing harm to our environment and wildlife. Even humans can be affected by such contamination in the water supply, and …show more content…

Present in all bodies of water are self cleaning mechanisms that are suppose to be able to break down the chemicals into simpler compounds that don’t harm the environment such as carbon dioxide (Rana, 2006, p. 42). Since there so many pollutants that the world is putting into our sewage systems on top of the runoffs from crops, and waste from manufacturers, the mechanisms can’t keep up with the toxic build up and eventually the water is concentrated with chemicals. Therefore the amphibian population starts to become poisoned and deformed. People tend to look past such issues because of the misconception that water treatment plants will just filter all the chemicals out easily. Although the treatment systems for our water are highly advanced, they fail to remove all the chemical agents from harmful pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and hazardous waste. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) described the general treatment of wastewater and its two basic stages, primary and secondary. In the primary treatment most solids are caught in a screen, then the sewage goes to a grit chamber to settle small pieces of debris at the bottom, then through the sedimentation tank. Afterwards, secondary treatment removes a majority of the organic matter, eventually being chlorinated before reaching an effluent (EPA, 1998). Over the last thirty years or so the population of frogs has begun to decline across the world. Not only until

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