Is dog poop toxic to the environment?
Yes, nitrogen and phosphate pollution.
Our much-loved dogs all come with regular deposits of dog faeces. These contain large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous. In an urban watershed, much of the nutrients can find their way into drains and creeks and then into coastal seas.
A human caused excess of nutrients can result in declining water quality and cultural eutrophication, that is a depletion of dissolved oxygen in lakes and sea water.
The nutrients cause increased algae growth, which eventually dies and the bacteria breaking down the dead algae use the water body’s dissolved oxygen.
The resulting low oxygen levels causing the death of fish and many other aerobic aquatic organisms.
In other cases, anaerobic noxious cyanobacteria (photosynthetic bacteria) produce hydrogen sulphide making any freshwater undrinkable.
Nitrogen from dog faeces finds its way into the atmosphere by volatilization as ammonia NH3 and is leached into groundwater as ammonium NH4.
Phosphorus as phosphate PO4 is not as soluble and as easily leached as nitrogen and is relatively stable in the soil. It is erosion of soil particles from exposed soil and the impervious hard surfaces common in urban areas preventing entry into the…
