Toxic waste is waste material, often in chemical form that can cause death or injury to living creatures. It usually is the product of industry or commerce, but comes also from residential use, agriculture, the military, medical facilities, radioactive sources, and light industry, such as dry cleaning establishments. There are many hazardous wastes or discarded materials that can pose a long-term risk to health or environment. Examples of toxic wastes are halogenated fluorocarbons, dioxin, asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and vinyl chloride. All forms of toxic waste in water are harmful and many are lethal to humans and other types of living organisms.
Lakes, rivers, streams, and pools used to irrigate crops, provide drinking water, and used for a sanitation system are polluted by sewage, industrial waste and toxins, heavy metals, fertilizers, chemicals, radioactive substances, land sediment, and oil. Polluted water is responsible for at least 25 million deaths a year in developing countries, three-fifths being children. Diseases that come from polluted water include typhoid, diarrhea, malaria, dysentery, hepatitis, and yellow fever. Five thousand water foul are killed every day due to toxic pollution in water. The pollution spreads up the food chain, and its damage is magnified with each animal and plant it spreads to. Toxic waste causes rapid algae growth, which takes up all the oxygen in water causing thousands of water creatures to die from suffocation.
Many companies, much of it coming from Britain, dump toxic waste into the ocean. Toxic waste causes toxic algae blooms, which develop underwater and kill anything that comes into contact with it. In 1988, a toxic algae bloom developed off the coasts of Denmark and Sweden, and it was 10 meters deep and 10 kilometers wide. It killed millions of ocean organisms and caused all the beaches in the area to close.
Toxic pollutants live long and are persistent in food chains.