Science Common Sense

1050 - What is the difference between pollution and contamination?

Imagine you have two cups of water.

Pollution is when someone throws yucky stuff like trash or bad chemicals into the air or a big lake. The whole lake is now dirty, and it's hard to make it clean again. Pollution makes the air or water unhealthy for everyone and everything around it.

Contamination is when someone puts something bad into your one cup of water, making just that cup dirty. You can still throw that cup away and get a new, clean cup. Contamination makes just that one thing (like your cup of water) dirty, but it's easier to fix.

So, pollution is like a big mess everywhere, while contamination is like a small mess in one spot.