Groundwater pollution issue is growing in size

Groundwater pollution has the potential to become very serious issue because groundwater represents a major source of drinking water for many urban as well as rural areas. Many people are not aware of the fact that groundwater is the largest available reservoir of freshwater and that available freshwater accounts to less than 0,5% of all water on our planet.

Since world population keeps constantly growing groundwater pollution issue is growing in size, especially as the number of human and industrial waste continues to rise down in the subsurface.

Groundwater pollution can occur as a result of many different factors such as leakage from underground storage tanks and chemical and waste storage facilities, leakage from hazardous waste dump sites, sewers, soak pits and also often by accidental discharge of waste.

In order to effectively tackle groundwater pollution researchers first need to find its source. However, in many cases it is extremely hard to find the source(s) of groundwater pollution mostly because of the lack of the adequate observation and the large number of different pollutants.

The Australian scientists have recently introduced the idea of computer algorithms to identify the sources of groundwater pollution. This method should give researchers much more information compared to traditional observing methods and lead them closer to the sources of groundwater pollution.

Groundwater makes up about twenty percent of the world's fresh water supply so the groundwater pollution issue needs to be stopped before it runs out of control, especially because global consumption of water is doubling approximately every 20 years. Clean water is together with clean air the most precious resource on our planet.