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. Although clean water is easily available in this country, the same cannot be said in many parts of the world. Because many people are used to having clean water without exerting that much effort, there seems to be a growing mentality in which they don’t really put that much value in it. 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., there is a sophisticated public water system responsible for treating and delivering over 44 billion gallons of clean water to every home, school, business establishment, building, and public office every day. If you are wondering where the water comes from, give those bodies of water you see every day and the same bodies of water you don’t really pay attention to, like rivers, lakes, and streams. There are a lot of things that the water needs to undergo before it gets delivered to homes, the purpose of which is to make sure it does not contain harmful substances 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.
On one hand, many Americans feel like they’re paying too much for clean and potable water; on the other hand, millions of people in some regions in Africa and Asia don’t even have access to freshwater. Talk about how unfair life is: while we complain about paying for clean water, the people who live in the other side of the world are facing the adversity of the desperate need for clean water for drinking and bathing. If we were to swap places with those people, many of us will never be able to survive the challenge of not having access to clean water.
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. But what we can do instead is begin acknowledging how important it is to be aware of water pollution and figure out ways to contribute to stopping it. If we continue denying the alarming level over which our waters are being used as dumping ground for waste, we will soon find ourselves having to starve and thirst for clean water.
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