Talk:Pollutant

Nice job on this article

Sodium (I'm saying this here, since your personal page has been inconsiderately hijacked by an element), nice job on this article! I especially like the fact that you didn't combine the concepts of pollutants (the agents themselves) and pollution (which I think should be used to present the effects of pollutants and the efforts (or lack thereof) to deal with them. --Stephen Gilbert

Thanks :-). I do actually have a personal page but it is hard to find, accessible through a link on the bottom of the sodium page. --sodium

Is this article supporting Global Warming theory?

Global warming gases are the first two examples. Is this article geared mainly toward supporting the Global Warming theory, or what? --Ed Poor

Actually although CFC is a greenhouse gas, in this article I described it in the context of destruction of the ozone layer, a different problem. Only one paragraph deals with global warming (which is very adequately dealt with elsewhere), and it doesn't support or deny it exists, just states what could happen.

What was the reason for the "held to be damaging" change? It is pretty securely known that CFCs are damaging, hence the massive banning of them. -- sodium

wha?

this article has a NPOV problem.... "nuclear - fossil" ????? "radiation will escape" ?????? ? ? --Kvuo 22:18, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Disputed

Contrary to what the article states, uranium is not a significant radioactive waste problem (see the uranium article). Its very long half life of 4.5*10⁹ years means that its radioactivity is very low, beacuse very little will decay at any time (this value is for U-238, uranium has other isotopes, but still the total activity of a sample of natural uranium, the activity of U-238, U-235, U-234, and their decay products is relativly low). Uranium emits alpha rays, which are easily blocked by a peice of paper or the skin. While it does emit radon gas, the uranium is there naturally in the ground, so uranium mining does not have a important impact on this. It is the various fission and neutron capture products of uranium that are the concern, but most of these do not have half lives on the order of millions of years (Sr-90 is 28.78y, Cs-137 is 30y, and some others are longer, but most not on the order of millions of years (and those that are have half lives so long they are not very radioactive and are therefore relativly non-toxic (compared to other radioisotopes in the waste))). Polonium 19:53, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Uhh... It Dont GO That way

"Many pollutants have a poisonous effect on the body. Carbon monoxide is an example of a substance which is damaging to humans. This compound is taken up in the body in preference to oxygen, causing the body to suffocate and drop dead." :p Thats REAL Scientific... Plz Fix It Offensiveandconfusing 17:45, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest major revising

For someone not familiar with pollutants and polution this article is confusing. It would be easier to understand, if there is a table for typical pollutants, their use and only a brief description of the effect at the beginning.

For example CFC - used as "Kühlmittel"* - destruction of the ozon layer, greenhouse effect CO - produced by the incomplete combustion of organic materials - severe health effects, suffocation asbestos - used for insulation - breast cancer and so on.

The effect can be described more in detail later in the text or in seperate articles. These articles might be already existing.

Maybe it would be also important to distinguish between pollutant and poison.

• sorry i don't get the english word at the moment.

--Stefan da 20:12, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Actual definition

is there a consice actual definition of that a pollutant is? is seems the article mainly lists a bunch of pollutants.193.137.16.112 16:31, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

While it's certainly WP:OR to say so, I don't believe the concept is a robust one. Oxygen at 20% in the air is presumably not a pollutant, but if some process were to release enough oxygen into a room to increase its level to 80% that would be very dangerous, both to human breathing and as a fire hazard. It might therefore be reasonable to say that this process is polluting the air in the room (which people love to argue both ways since it has more technical content than the number of angels on a pinhead). But if another process were to decrease the oxygen down to 5% now you'd have an even more serious breathing hazard and your gas stove would no longer work properly. Yet in the latter case, what is the "pollutant?"

A better concept than a "pollutant" per se is the notion of a system out of balance or malfunctioning. A substance normally absent from the system whose presence puts the system out of balance or otherwise hinders its operation is then an absolute pollutant with respect to that system.

If however that substance is normally part of the system then what does it mean to call it a pollutant when it is present in the wrong quantity? Clearly not the whole of it is polluting, but you can't point to any one molecule of it and say this molecule is polluting. Too much of it can be considered polluting the system, but what about too little? --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 20:49, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

About the merger

I think pollutants must be part of the Pollution article (maybe a subsection). The reasons are obvious. Wikipedia should be as concise as possible and not spread out in different articles which talk about the same thing. We are trying to gather information and make it clear for people not spread it all over Wikipedia. The Vindictive 14:36, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I have recreated the page. The topic is important enough to warrant its own article. I feel that WP can be concise AND have have many articles with a degree of overlap. Note that not all pollution is from pollutants. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 04:15, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

This is a never-ending question. The general test for whether a sub-topic of an article warrants its own article seems to be whether there is sufficient material on the subtopic to justify making it a self-contained article. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 15:41, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Greenhouse gasses

I think the description of greenhouse gasses as pollutants should be in the article; it's misleading in the #See also. I'll see what I can do. Perhaps quoting the "new" EPA regulations would be a start. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 14:00, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Stock pollutants vs. fund pollutants

This article has a subsection on “fund pollutants” but not “stock pollutants”. Perhaps both should get subsections? Or maybe we should change the header from “fund pollutants” to “fund pollutants vs. stock pollutants”? Stock pollutants are mentioned in the first four sentences of this article after the lead.

Also, there seems to be some subtly and nuance in these two intertwined concepts. Here is what a reliable source says:

“ Assimilative capacity (or absorptive capacity) is the capacity of the environment to absorb discharges of waste. As long as the assimilative capacity of the environment is not reached, discharges will not lead to pollution. When a discharge causes the assimilative capacity to be exceeded, however, pollution results. Assimilative capacity is considered relative to stock pollutants and fund pollutants. A stock pollutant is a substance or material for which the assimilative capacity is very small. Stock pollutants are toxic and they accumulate in the environment over time with little or very slow degradation; essentially, any discharge of a stock pollutant will result in an unacceptable negative impact….A fund pollutant is a substance or material for which the assimilative capacity is relatively large. Fund pollutants produce little accumulation in the environment over time.[1] ”

[1]Lindeburg, Michael. PE Environmental Review, p. 395 (Simon and Schuster 2019).
Apparently, a fund pollutant only causes pollution after the assimilative capacity is reached, correct? And ditto for a stock pollutant. This is a subtle concept: a pollutant that does not currently cause pollution, and may never cause pollution especially if it is a fund pollutant. This point deserves some clarification in this article. Incidentally, this talk page section extends a discussion begun at another talk page, namely talk:History of climate change science. Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:53, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Done. Anythingyouwant (talk) 22:35, 8 August 2022 (UTC)