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Article: Pollution Sources: Point and Nonpoint
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- Water:Science and Issues
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Pollution Sources: Point and Nonpoint
All activities on Earth, both natural processes and human-made processes, produce some type of byproduct from that activity. Under normal conditions these byproducts, some known as
pollutants
, are returned back into the environment. In fact, natural environmental processes have the ability to assimilate some pollutants and correct most imbalances if given enough time. However, if a persistent overload of a pollutant is allowed to continue or the pollutant is not a substance that the environment can handle, then the environment has little chance to "self-clean."
Point and Nonpoint Pollution Sources
In the simplest of terms, a pollutant is a ...