ABE - Water Health (Lesson)
Water Health
In the world of the 21st century, the greatest scandal is that more than a billion people do not have easy access to a safe supply of freshwater. Not having easy access to water means a real hardship for millions of people, mostly women.
As everyone knows, dirty water kills. On our planet dirty water kills on a massive scale. The major killer is common enough: diarrhea. In developing countries, some 4 million people are affected each year and many of them, mostly children, die as a result of the dehydration that follows severe and untreated diarrhea. Such disease is easily treated with salts dissolved in water. Even so, the World Health Organization estimates that unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene now cause the death of nearly 200 people an hour - that is, 200 people every hour of every day of every year.
But this is not the end of the story. As much as 80% of all illnesses in developing countries are water-related. Some, like diarrhea, are transmitted through water by micro-organisms. Others, including malaria, which still kills more than 1 million people per year, are transmitted by larger animals (in this case the mosquito) that live on or in stagnant water. This list of water-borne illnesses is long: dengue fever, guinea worm disease, trachoma, bilharzia, and river blindness are the best known. Of these, many are debilitating diseases that condemn sufferers to a lifetime of blindness or inaction. The economic loss to countries that can still afford it is staggering. While action can, and should be taken to control and eliminate all these diseases, contaminated water can cause even more intractable problems. A relatively recent discovery is the high level of arsenic found in water supplies in many different parts of the world. The situation has become extremely serious over large areas in Bangladesh, ironically as a result of a program to sink more and deeper boreholes to obtain better quality water. The new water has been found to be contaminated, in some places, heavily, by naturally occurring arsenic. The resulting disease, called arsenicosis, builds up over time and can cause death. Fluorosis, caused by the build-up of fluoride, is a similar form of water poisoning that has become a major public health problem in many parts of Asia and North Africa.
Solutions to Depletion of Fresh Water
Citizen action, government legislation and regulation, new technologies, economic incentives, and public education are all enabling us to confront what will surely be one of the greatest environmental challenges of the new century: ensuring adequate quantity and quality of freshwater for ourselves and for the planet's ecosystems.
Accessible freshwater comprises only a minuscule percentage of the hydrosphere, but we generally take it for granted. With our expanding population and increasing water usage, we are approaching conditions of widespread scarcity. Water depletion and water pollution are already taking a toll on the health, economies, and societies of the developing world, and they are beginning to do so in arid areas of the developed world. There is reason to hope that we may yet attain sustainability in our water usage, however, potential solutions are numerous and the issue is too important to ignore.
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