Contamination is the PRESENCE of a substance that should not be present naturally.
Pollution is when the contaminant causes HARM to organisms or infrastructure.
Therefore you can have a contaminated environment without it being polluted but you cannot have a polluted environment without it being contaminated.
Pollution is introduction of harmful substance in environment while contamination is presence of extraneous especially infectious material that is harmful or we can say any foreign body which should not be there..
Pollutant produce highly damage or disturb ecosystem while contaminant should be support by system without stopping general life cycle
See what FAO said:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/x5624e/x5624e04.htm#1.1 contamination or pollution
All answers are good. Easy example I use to say to my student is "the air in the room is contaminated by smoke cigarette while the air in a city is polluted by flue gas emissions".
All above given answers are right because there is a little difference between contamination and pollution (most of the people use these terms for same purpose/meaning, especially in scientific literature). To me, CONTAMINATION is the presence of a foreign material (mostly undesirable) in any other substance and makes substance impure (but it does not mean to be harmful), and POLLUTION is the introduction of harmful substance/material (also undesirable) into the environment.
Contamination: the presence of a substance that is normally not present; that substance does not need to be harmful to be considered as a contaminant.
pollution: when a certain substance is considered as harmful in any given aspect; the substance is considered as a polluant even if it is a substance that is normally present there, but when it exceeds harmless limits, thats when the term pollution is used
Contamination is the PRESENCE of a substance that should not be present naturally.
Pollution is when the contaminant causes HARM to organisms or infrastructure.
Therefore you can have a contaminated environment without it being polluted but you cannot have a polluted environment without it being contaminated.
I especially agree with Tom Sizmur and Hussein Kanbar: Contamination is not automatically harmful. Sedimentary iron contamination of ground water is not seen as pollution in most cases, for example. But it's also a question of amounts of contamination: If a heavy metal contamination of ground water is so low that it has no short- nor long-term biological implications, I wouldn't call it pollution either. In general, contamination and pollution shouldn't be seen as the same, in my opinion.
Most of the answers earlier provided are interesting. However, to a lay man, soil/water pollution can be regarded as an 'advanced stage' of soil/water contamination. By the time any of the ecosystem get contaminated and possibly exceeded the tolerable level, then such a contaminated ecosystem has become polluted. Simple.
I think contamination is the addition of something that was not orginally present while pollution is when the amount of something is greater than normal.
Contamination could be any quantity of contaminant, pollution means when quantity of pollutant reached to a level which become hazardous to health.
Interesante pregunta y respuestas, sin embargo creo que la definición no es estática y si existe es por que se ha roto un equilibrio que no ha podido asimilar la presencia de un agente o cambio de sus concentraciones concentraciones relativas en un ecosistema.
Pullution applied to the introduction into the environment of substances which are either harmful to human health, resources and ecosystem of which is a part. Contamination is used for situation where a substances is present in the environment, but not causimng any obvious harm.
The term pollution and contamination are often used interchangeably but in Fact, they have subtle differences. Soil contamination can be defined as the situation when the content of a natural or synthetic substance is above the background or natural content but does not necessarily mean that the substance is causing harm to plants, animals and human. Soil pollution refers to a condition in which the concentration of a substance is higher than would naturally occur, and as well it can cause harmful effects to organism especially human beings. Therefore, a soil could be contaminated but not polluted according to the above definition.
The underlying difference between contamination and pollution is the EFFECT. Whereas contamination is the presence of substances that have the potential to cause harm, it becomes pollution when harmful effect occurs
It could depend on the quantities of the foreign materials mix with the water. It also very much depended on the sources of the contaminant and pollutants either natural or anthropogenic types.
Simply put, pollution is said to take place when harmful substances are introduced into the environment (air, water, etc.) in such quantity and concentration that pose significant harm or hazard to living organisms and/or man. Contamination, on the other hand, is the presence in high levels of harmful substances in the environment over and above their natural levels of concentration. Contamination does not necessarily constitute pollution; it is when such concentration leads to significant harmful effects on the lives of organisms and/or man that pollution occurs.
Let work with water. Water is H2O, everything else is a contamination and a contamination becomes pollution when its concentration exceed a threshold value (e,g, MCL for drinking water).
Back to soil I agree with the argumentations considering human activity and background levels.
Most people use the terms contamination and pollution interchangeably as they both deal with unwanted elements.
The substances that cause pollution are termed as “pollutants” while those that lead to contamination are called “contaminants”. For instance, a waste material in a river may be called as a contaminant or a pollutant.
Another similarity is the remediation process. The clean-up steps for pollution are identical with that of contamination. Moreover, they are linked in a way that the introduction of harmful contaminants leads to pollution.
However, pollution is regarded with more negativity due to its more perilous impacts as compared to contamination. Indeed, these occurrences are interconnected and comparable; yet, they still have notable differences.
Pollution may occurs from the contaminated sites or anthropogenic sources which is crossing the values of threshold limits of toxicity observed harmful to the soil ecological component.
The contaminated soil is the presence of undesirable substances that is safe for crop production because it may not cause any harmful effect to soil health or ecological component of the soil.
Pollution may occurs from the contaminated sites or anthropogenic sources which is crossing the values of threshold limits of toxicity observed harmful to the soil ecological component.
The contaminated soil is the presence of undesirable substances that is safe for crop production because it may not cause any harmful effect to soil health or ecological component of the soil.
The contaminated soil is the presence of undesirable substances that is safe for crop production because it may not cause any harmful effect to soil health or ecological component of the soil.
Pollution may occurs from the contaminated sites or anthropogenic sources which is crossing the values of threshold limits of toxicity observed harmful to the soil ecological component.
The contaminated soil is the presence of undesirable substances but safe for crop production that was not known for any harmful effect to soil health or ecological component of the soil.
Pollution may occurs from the anthropogenic sources or contaminated sites which is crossing the values of threshold limits of toxicity, observed harmful to the soil ecological component.
Creo que en toxicologia la contaminación es un concepto cuantitativo mientra la polución e cualitativo --
Pollution is the introduction of any substance or form of energy to air, water, soil or land or food which threatens the survival, health or activities of human and all other living organisms whereas contamination is the introduction of foreign substance into the environment without necessarily harm any living organism.
What differentiate them is the level of concentration, while pollution is introduction harmful substances to a high level of concentration so as yo cause harm to man,material and the environment, contamination on the other hand is the introduce of substances into our enviry at a low concentration that my not be harmful to the environment
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