Question: Can contaminated water/air affect animals in the same way it affects humans?

Heather Price answered on 25 Jun 2014:

Hi Alberteinstein12,

Yes, you’re absolutely right; animals can be affected in the same way as humans. For example, asthma is one of the big health problems for humans which can be triggered by air pollution. Animals like cats can also be affected – check out this video of a cat taking an asthma inhaler (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDxyUWG7MCE)!

Some air pollution is really acidic, and when it rains the acidic pollution gets washed out of the sky and falls to the ground as acid rain which can make water pollution. This is bad news for plants and animals. Too much acid rain can stop the trees from taking in water and can damage the leaves (check out his photo of a forest damaged by acid rain: http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/acid-rain-overview/). When acid rain reaches the ground it makes its way to rivers, lakes and wetlands. Some of the fish are pretty hard core and don’t mind the acid rain, but others are really sensitive to it and can die. Acid rain is also bad for buildings – it can do this () to gargoyles!

Most of the research that’s been done on air and water pollution is trying to see what happens to humans. That’s because scientists are humans, and usually humans care most about what happens to themselves! But because we can’t do much research directly on humans (because there aren’t many volunteers) scientists often do their experiments on animals, especially fish, rats and mice. So we actually know quite a lot about what happens when fish, rats and mice are exposed to pollution!