How can leachate cause pollution?
Pollution occurs when harmful substances usually produced by people, enter a river or soak into the ground, and • cause damage to the animal and plant life living in a river, or • remain in the ground to cause damage later. It is easy to think of the ways in which pollution will harm a river, but if you think about it most of the water that soaks into the ground will move slowly through the ground and if it is polluted it will harm living things in the future when it flows out in streams, or is pumped up to become the water we drink, and water our crops with. Leachate causes harm in many ways. The most important way it causes harm is by its potential to lower the dissolved oxygen (DO) content of any watercourse it may enter. Leachate normally contains high concentrations of dissolved nutrients and these act as a food source for aerobic aquatic micro-organisms. As a result of being fed, these organisms grow rapidly and in so doing they consume large amounts of oxygen from the water arou
