ABSTRACT

According to the law of mass conservation, mass can neither be created nor destroyed but only transformed from one form to another. Thus everything must go somewhere. The notion of cleaning up the environment or pollution-free products is a scientific absurdity. We can never avoid pollution effects. Nobody—neither man nor nature—consumes anything; we only borrow some of the earth’s resources for a while, extract them from the earth, transport them to another part of the planet, process them, use them, and discard, reuse, or reformulate them (Cloud 1971). These principles are applied again and again in environmental management of aquatic ecosystems.