Paragraph on Ocean Pollution!
For many years, people were relatively unconcerned about the pollution of the oceans because the great mass of the sea can dilute a huge volume of foreign matter to the point where it has little effect.
In recent years, this attitude has changed because pollutants are often added in such relatively high concentrations that environmental disruption does occur before the pollutants have a chance to disperse.
In addition, the quantity of pollutants dumped into ocean has grown so large that some scientists fear that global effects may be significant.
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Oil spilling in oceans is a major problem. Between 1969 and 1983 there were more than 500 tanker accidents that involved oil spills. Altogether, more than one million tonnes of oil was released. During Gulf War a huge amount of oil spilled in nearby seas and caused great damage to the ocean life. Apart from accidents, seepage of oil is also common.
Sometimes thousand tonnes of oil spills out of the tanker by large leakage as happened recently (October, 1997) near Singapore. Even tanker captains often clean the oily holds of their ships in ocean waters.
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Offshore drilling operations also contribute their share of oil to the sea. The largest spill so far started on June 3, 1979, at an offshore oil well owned by Pemex, the Mexican National Oil Company. The total quantity of oil that finds its way into the sea each year is very large. There is a tendency to dispose of high poisonous chemical wastes including chemical warfare agents, pesticide residues and radioactive substances into oceans. The sealed drums are usually dumped into the sea.
All these dumping activities have had adverse effect on the entire ecology of the oceans. During 1972 Stockholm Conference on Human Environment, a study entitled, ‘The Health of Oceans’ was released, which has attracted the attention of world leaders but till now nothing substantial has been done in this field. The blasting of atom bombs under ocean waters is the greatest threat to the ocean environment, which must be banned immediately by all nations.