The Need for Clean Water: Things You Probably Still Don’t Know
One of the most unfortunate realities in a highly unequal world is the fact that not everyone has direct and convenient access to fresh water for drinking and bathing. Clean water may be available right away in industrialized countries, but the same can never be said for so many countries. Since many people conveniently get clean water on a daily basis, there appears a tendency for them to forget or ignore the significance or value of this precious resource. In fact, it’s obvious that because of the sheer abundance of water in this part of the world, many people don’t really care about it getting polluted. But with the world population rapidly congesting the planet, the rate of water pollution is increasing at a very alarming pace.
In the event that clean water used for drinking and bathing is polluted, the casualty isn’t only the environment. Human health is also put at great risk, obviously because we all depend on clean water to keep our bodies hydrated.
In the U.S. alone, public water systems are responsible for treating and distributing more than 44 billion gallons of clean water every single day to homes, business establishments, public places, and schools. If you’re wondering where all this water comes from, then think about inland and surface bodies of water like rivers, streams, and lakes. Before water is delivered to homes, it needs to be subjected to a highly advanced treatment process to remove harmful stuff like bacteria, chemicals, and particulates. So, it’s fair to say that the clean and potable water we are using every day for eating, cooking, drinking, cleaning, and bathing needs to be valued the way it needs to be valued.
While many Americans complain about paying water bills, millions of families, specifically in some regions of Africa and Asia don’t even have easy access to fresh water. There’s a lot of unfairness in here as most of us complain about something that’s making life a lot easier while many people from the other side of the world wake up each day facing the dire need for clean water for drinking and bathing. If we were forced to trade places, most of us wouldn’t survive.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot most of us can do in order to address the need for clean water for people who don’t have enough of it. However, you still can do some positive change by way of educating yourself of the risks involved in tolerating water pollution in your area. The continuing denial that there’s a serious water pollution issue could put every one of us in a situation where we might be forced to fight just to get access to clean water.