CLEAN WATER

CLEAN WATER

Water is a basic requirement to sustain any life form. Humanity's livelihood revolves around water. It is utilized everyday whether to water your garden roses or to hydrate yourself after a long football game. We rely on water to cook food, to fill your tiny backyard swimming pool, or even to generate electricity through damps. Heck, 60% of our bodies is made of water. However, the changing climate patterns and human's factors have put the Earth's clean water reserve at risk.


Today, "780 million people lack access to an improved water source, approximately one in nine people." Dirty water is one of the world's biggest health risk. Water from rain travels down your roof, carrying all the trash, chemicals, and other disease-carrying organisms along the way.

In many industrial region, factories neglect their obligation to protect the water supply and prevent from contaminating it. Toxic waste from industrial production is dumped straight into rivers or stream nearby. Big corporations spend million covering up their illicit pollution (Ex: watch "A Civil Action" with John Travolta).




Other activities such as fracking, or the process of producing natural gas, also contribute to the contamination of our drinking water. Moreover, with the lack of efficient sanitation systems, human wastes are processed perfunctorily and our reserve of clean water keeps plummeting.

In many areas, bodies of water are polluted. Here's an illustration:



1. Disease: drinking polluted water can make you sick. No kidding... Eating fishes that are poisoned by certain artificial chemical can cause Heppatietis. In isolated areas, locals would produce excrement at rivers and lakes. The consumption of this contaminated water can cause cholera and other fatal conditions.

2. Destruction to the ecosystem: in 2002, the Prestige Oil Spill off the coast of Galicia caused by the sinking of an oil tanker "polluted thousands of kilometers of coastlines and more than one thousand beaches on the coast of Spain, France, and Portugal".

Seabirds are affected most heavily due to their frequent contact with the water surface and  the coast lines, where many bird species congregate to breed. Seabirds' exposure to contaminated sediments or preys would cause many psychological conditions and in many cases, death. The long term effect is the decrease in the food supply, which are eradicated by the oil spill.


SINCE WATER IS SO IMPORTANT FOR EARTH'S EXISTENCE, WHAT SHOULD WE DO?

Many technologies are being develop to help recycle the heavily contaminated water for non personal uses, such as irrigation or usage for industrial productions.



Laws prohibiting the polluting of any water supply must be made and enforced on any individual, any factory, or any big corporation. No exception. Once the source of contamination has been drastically reduced, then will any effort toward water purification be effective.

YOU CAN PARTICIPATE IN THIS WATER SAVING CAMPAIGN AS WELL!!! 

By reducing the amount of water being wasted on unnecessary activities, you are helping to conserve our limited water supply. Stop taking baths, and shower instead. Turn off your faucet when you are brushing your teeth. Try and limit the water needed to wash your dishes everyday. These little things can be quite influential when every single individual on Earth is participating in this campaign.
TOGETHER, WE CAN MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE!!!






BIBLIOGRAPHY:
http://water.org/water-crisis/water-facts/water/
http://www.nrdc.org/water/
http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9142.aspx
http://eschooltoday.com/pollution/water-pollution/effects-of-water-pollution.html
http://enviropol.com/index.php/effects-of-water-pollution
http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/library/archives/water-crisis/
http://www.drinking-water.org/html/en/Overview/Why-Is-There-a-Problem.html
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/coal-oil-gas/biggest-oil-spills-in-history#slide-1