Dangers of water pollution As shown in the case of Tarawa Lagoon, water pollution can kill people by spreading diseases. It can also cause poisonings, and make food like fish taste bad, or even be dangerous to eat. Some kinds of pollution in water may not be strong enough to hurt us immediately, but they may slowly collect in our bodies until there is enough poison to make us sick. Since it happens slowly, we may not even know why we are sick. Such water pollution can be a threat to local people and damaging to the tourist industry.
Pollution also damages natural systems.
It may hurt the productivity of mangroves, lagoons and coral reefs that are important island resources. It can upset the delicate balance between different kinds of life, as when excess nutrients encourage algae to grow. All wastes put in water that are not broken down along the way eventually find their way into the ocean, where they accumulate like the salt that makes sea water salty. Already some man-made pollutants from industrialized countries have contaminated all the world s oceans. Once a persistent pollutant is in the sea, it is almost impossible to remove, but because the oceans are so large, most such pollutants are diluted to the point that they are not a danger, at least at present.