Our Planet’s Water Crisis
Water is a unique and fascinating substance! Everyone knows that life cannot exit apart from the presence of clean, liquid water. While we are able to live several weeks without food, we can only live days without water. Recent moon explosions were planned for the purpose of, hopefully, detecting the presence of water through analyzing the dust, for moon colonization is virtually impossible without it.
The earth contains plenty of water for us all. If we divide the total 326 million trillion gallons of water on earth by the current population, 5.8 billion, we see we have 56 billion gallons apiece. The average person in the world has a daily requirement of water for sanitation, bathing, and cooking needs of about 13.2 gallons. Thus we have enough water down here to last each of us over 11 million years (not counting population growth)! That doesn’t take into consideration the free recycling system provided for us called evaporation and condensation.
The problem is that most of this water is unusable in its present form. Ninety-eight percent of the water on the planet is in the oceans, and is, therefore, unusable for drinking because of the salt. Of the 2% of the planet’s fresh water, 1.6% is unusable in the polar ice caps and glaciers. Another 0.36% is found underground in aquifers and wells. A mere .036% of the earth’s water is found in lakes and rivers. That’s still thousands of trillions of gallons, (in fact, 392 million gallons each) but it’s a very small amount compared to all the water available. The sobering fact is that only about 0.007% of all water on earth (and less than 1% of the world’s fresh water) is accessible for direct human use.
Another problem is that the available useable water is not distributed evenly to the population. The average person living in a slum in a developing country uses in a whole day about the same amount of water that an American uses taking a five-minute shower. Nearly one billion people lack access to safe water. Those 884 million amount to approximately one in eight people. That amounts to about one in eight people. Further, two and a half billion do not have access to improved sanitation, which means they are unable or don’t bother to separate drinking water from wastewater.
Major health issues throughout the world result from a lack of sanitary drinking water. One estimate is that half of all those in hospital beds at any one time are there because of a water related disease. On average a child dies from a water-related disease every 15-20 seconds in the world, and the usual cause is diarrhea. That adds up to a staggering 1.4 million children each year. The children in these environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies because of stagnant water supplies. We are told that 88% of cases of diarrhea worldwide are attributable to unsafe water, inadequate sanitation, or insufficient hygiene.
Polluted water brings death, but also an increase in disease, crime, birth defects, and decreased ability to concentrate in school. In other words, it results in major economic decline. An investment in pure water sources, even desalination of the sea water, is an investment with dividends. On average, every US dollar invested in water and sanitation for a third world people provides an economic return for them of eight US dollars.
Some want us to live like they do, not watering our lawns or taking a shower as often. This is faulty thinking. Lowering our living standard in use of water only borrows their problems. The main reason America has sufficient good, clean water is that we have learned where to get it and how to preserve it. We shouldn’t feel guilty; we should be more aware of our need to be good stewards of it, and we should be more willing to share our technology with others. When our sources of water are conserved and maintained, we set a high standard for others to follow.
But what if you are on well water or city water that has bad taste or odors. You would be benefited by an activated charcoal water filter. The Berkey Water Filter are the best line of activated charcoal filter we are aware of. Check out the Berkey Light or another model. One amazing feature is that each set of filters they ship with can be re-cleaned to purify up to 6,000 gallons of drinking water.
Tags: Aquifers, Average Person, Colonization, Condensation, Developing Country, Evaporation, Fresh Water, Glaciers, global water crisis, Lakes And Rivers, Liquid Water, Million Trillion, Million Years, Ninety Eight, One Billion, Polar Ice Caps, Population Growth, Recycling System, Slum, Trillions, water crisis, water shortage, world water crisis