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Our Planet’s Water Crisis
Water is a life giving 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.
It is certain that earth is not short of water. The 326 million trillion gallons of water on earth divided by the current population, 5.8 billion, reveals that we have 56 billion gallons apiece. For sanitation, bathing, and cooking needs, the average person in the world has a daily requirement of about 13.2 gallons of water. That means the world contains enough water to last each of us over 11 million years (not counting population growth)! And that doesn’t take into consideration its wonderful ability to be recycled.
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 locked up 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 still provides 392 million gallons for each of us. 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.
The problem is bad also because useable water is not evenly available to the world population. The average American uses more water taking a five-minute shower than the typical person living in a slum in a developing country uses in a whole day. Nearly one billion people of the world do not have access to safe water. Nearly one billion people of the world lack access to safe water. 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. As many as half of all people in hospital beds at any given time are there because of a water related disease. This results in one child dying from a water-related disease, usually from diarrhea, every 15-20 seconds. That totals 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. In all, unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, or insufficient hygiene account for 88% of diarrhea cases worldwide.
Polluted water brings death, but also an increase in disease, crime, birth defects, and decreased ability to concentrate in school. In short, it results in general economic decline. An investment in pure water sources, even desalination of the sea water, is an investment with dividends. Some have estimated that every US dollar invested in providing adequate water supplies returns a benefit to them of eight US dollars.
Some would have us in the west feel guilty for taking a shower or watering our lawns. This reasoning is flawed. Lowering our living standard in use of water only borrows their problems. America has good, clean water because we have learned where to find or clean it, and how to preserve it. Our response to criticism should not be guilt but better stewardship and an increased willingness to share our knowledge with others. When our water systems are conserved and maintained, America will continue to 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 Filter are the best line of activated charcoal filter we are aware of. Check out the Royal Berkey 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.
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