8 Seconds

Every eight seconds, a child dies for drinking contaminated water. According to UNICEF, polluted water claims the lives of 1.5 million children every year due to water-borne diseases, which gives us a total of 5 million people who die every year just because of drinking water – water, that’s supposedly meant to help us, not kill us.

Fresh water is a valuable commodity which must be well managed and conserved. Drinking water is a basic necessity for human lives. But if the water we drink isn’t clean, it may be a cause of some serious disease. Statistics show that out of more than six billion people in the world today, an astonishing one billion have no access to clean drinking water.

There is a progress. Well, at least a bit. Despite this commendable progress, an estimated 425 million children under the age of 18 still don’t have access to an improved water supply, and over 980 million don’t have access to ample sanitation. But that’s not just it. Millions more have their developments disrupted and are suffering health problems like diarrhea or other water-related diseases. An estimated 11.3 billion dollars a year is needed to meet low-cost basic levels of services for both drinking water and sanitation. By the year 2015, more than 80 percent will be needed in Africa and in Asia.

Back in the 1980s (wherein the decade was declared to be 'The International Drinking Water Supply' decade), the United Nations spent around $100 billion on water supply projects. But look here: we need not spend that much, in these critical times where every peso counts. The solution is not throwing more money into more water projects that don’t even seem to have much effect; heck, we're not even sure if the allotted money goes to those projects. The real problem is the lack of sustained, effective political commitment and implementation.

Every eight seconds, there’s a child who will not live to see tomorrow and celebrate their birthday. 88% of the 1.9 million children suffer from diarrhea each year. More than 4,000 children are dying every day because of diarrhea. Do we have to wait for more children to die?
Let us remember:
A LIFE IS TAKEN EVERY EIGHT SECONDS.
We have to act now, or start counting.
8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1.

High Schooler's Water Cleaner Fights Pollution From Teflon Plant

2007 Breakthrough Awards /// The Innovators /// Next Generation Award /// Kelydra Elizabeth Welcker

By Logan Ward

Video by Virtual Dream
Video Produced by Allyson Torrisi
Photograph by Mark Asnin

Published in the November 2007 issue.


Parkersburg, W.Va., is a city of 33,000 on the Ohio River. For decades, a DuPont plant 7 miles upstream has polluted the local waters with ammonium perfluorooctanoate (APFO), a surfactant used to make Teflon. As debate raged about possible health effects, Parkersburg South High School student Kelydra Welcker, now an 18-year-old college freshman, took action. “There was little being done to discover ways to remove this chemical from the environment,” Welcker says. “I knew there had to be a solution, and I wanted to be part of it.”

She devised a simple test for the presence of the chemical in water, which involved measuring the foam on a shaken sample of boiled water. Then, using hand-me-down chemistry equipment in a makeshift lab set up in a trailer behind her house, Welcker developed a way to remove APFO from water by combining granular activated carbon, the stuff that cleans fish tanks, and electrosorption, which draws remaining APFO ions to a pair of electrodes. She has made a desktop unit for treating small quantities of domestic drinking water, and she hopes the local utility company—with assistance from DuPont—will scale up her technique to treat water on a community-wide basis.

“I hope people understand that science isn’t just people in white lab coats speaking gibberish,” says Welcker, who has been winning science awards since she was 13. “Scientists are real people who want to make a positive impact on their world.”

When people step forward to help..

This is from National Geographic under their Environment Videos.

Coastal Cleanup - Each year, hundreds of thousands of volunteers gather to clean up coastlines around the world.

Alabama Public Television: Learn Something New Everyday

This site is very useful for you to visualize concepts that we presented in our older posts. They provide videos and written explanations of their activities/experiments.

Here are some of their activities:

1. Where's the water?
2. Water Pollution
3. Bottled vs Tap, which tastes better?
4. Water Supply and Demand

Aquamergency!

Info 001

Just a related topic...

Remember the melamine food issue? I remember this morning show in a local channel around November. The hosts and guest artists were joined by doctors Lisa and Ong and the BFAD director Leticia Gutierrez. According to Dr. Ong, drinking 12 glasses of water daily can actually can avoid melamine-affected products. Dry foods are also better than the wet food, since the wet ones usually spoil much easily like mayonnaise, yoghurt and sauces.

Posters

Thinking of IT. (Part 3)

A couple of really simple questions managed to boggle my mind today: What, Why and How. For one:

What is our site all about? I think our introduction answered that, though.

How do we propose to encourage our readers/followers to help in our advocacy --- in their own 'little' ways? We are focusing on garbage and chemical dumping in bodies of water, so we shared some of our experiences and advised people on how they can help, with as little effort as they can afford. A simple throw-your-trash-in-the-right-place is a really goooood start. :)

Why should you (our readers) choose to support our advocacy over others? What good can it really do to you right now?... and then I realize I'm stuck.

To tell the truth, each advocacy (yeahp, there are a LOT. Apparently, our whole Pisay Batch 2011 are making these things) presents an important issue that we WILL NEED to address sometime, if not soon. We, or rather I, don't know any 100%-certain way to get every person who reads about our site to follow it, and help spread the word. Your choice can also be directed towards your interests, or to which advocacy you can relate to when you have discussed or talked or thought about these things in class, et cetera. That doesn't mean we are going to give up though, for we know that these sort-of things can go far, if not very, VERY far. :D


For me, you need to support this advocacy because

• Water is essential to our life. We need, and always will need, water in our everyday activities: cooking, cleaning, eating, you name it. There is less than 1% of the world's water that really remains drinkable for over 6 trillion people. Would you really want to lessen it further?
• Water in itself, as was mentioned in one of our articles, is full of minerals and nutrients. However, purification and distillation may take away these natural nutrition and add 'artificial' ones.
• Continual disposal of garbage and chemicals into the sea can rise several economic crisis (e.g. red tide). Many in the Philippines fish for a living. Let these problems go on for several days, and you can't be sure if that seafood you're eating is safe.
• Improperly disposed trash can cause flooding and may even come into contact with our water supplies. Many diseases can be passed in such a manner, and infected water can even cause skin diseases in our baths. Flooding can also cause accidents, and may disrupt our schedules, specially if we're on the road a lot.

Those are some of the reasons why you should choose to follow this advocay and support it. You can save not only your life and the lives of your loved ones, but many others. You can help make sure that what you're having is safe and not toxic. You can help lessen the fatalities that people (who don't have access to clean water) are exposed to.

Support our site!! And you will learn. :)

Act now.

We have previously talked about many things about water. You have heard about these things many times already. Diseases, water crisis and many things due to water pollution. You now know the horrible effects of this environmental problem. Is this enough? Does it end here?

No. Knowing is not enough. You have to act to end this problem. But first you have to know its causes. Water pollutants are of different types but mostly four contributors are agriculture, natural, industrial pollutants and municipal. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and global warming are some of the natural pollutants. As a human, you cannot do anything about these natural calamities.

Agriculture is one of the major water pollutants. Animal wastes, pesticides and fertilizer often end up in streams, and rivers. This can be stopped by informing the farmers on proper waste disposal and the effects of water pollution.

Then comes the water pollution caused by the municipalities and industries. Industries dump toxic waste that have harmful effects on ecosystems and humans. Municipalities dump waste from the cities and residential areas to bodies of water. You might be one of these people who throw garbage to rivers and other bodies of water. We all know the case of Pasig River. This bad practice should be stopped. We need water, so let us protect it.

The point of this post is to say this. We are part of the problem we are facing. Let us begin now. We have to change our ways to combat this problem. Stop throwing your garbage at bodies of water. With this little act, you are helping reduce water pollution.

To Tap, or not to Tap?

Nowadays, the term purified water is very common among us. We perceive “purified water” as something pure, clean, and healthy, and that is true enough. Many people rely on this for their drinking water. Tap water, on the other hand, gathers the adjectives dirty, unsafe, full of pathogens, unhealthy, etc. We then start to wonder, what happened to the once source of drinking water for the people?

In the past, all of our water came from the tap. These were used for washing, cleaning, and yes, drinking. Back then, water companies maintain these waters well, and made sure that what we get in our homes was safe enough to be drunk. However, as our economy went down the hill, and the population grew larger, water companies cannot cope up with the growing demands of cleaner and safer water that could suffice all of the people, and so starts the declination of the quality of tap water.

Also, illegal connection of tubes from some communities of people further complicates the problem, as bacteria and other harmful pathogens could easily penetrate leaking tubes from these hastily and poorly-attached connections. Rust could also develop easily on these low-quality tubes utilized by the offenders, and so waters passing through these connections could be discolored by the rust.

However, as opposed to the fears of the population, studies and experiments done by the Metro Manila Drinking Water Quality Monitoring Committee as of 2007 [1] showed that the tap water is generally clean and safe to drink from. According to the MWSS-Regulatory Office, tests made showed that the water source and supplies of the cities contained no traces of bacteria that caused water-borne illnesses.

Purified water, on the other hand, is the most popular choice among the people in our society. To many, as I have said a while ago, this is safe, pure, clean, etc, and so many people are attracted to patronizing them. I’m not saying that this is wrong, but let me share you some facts. An independent study done in some developed country shows that 50% of the bottled waters there, which claim they are purified, are actually bottled tap waters. What are the chances that the same fact doesn’t exist in the Philippines?

Also, true purified water is water that has gone through extensive purifying stages, meaning the water is purified up to the extent that they are simply water – pure water. When we drink water, what we get is the nourishment that our body needs not just against dehydration, but nourishment that minerals in those waters could provide us. When we purify water, some of these minerals and ions, like calcium, are naturally lost from the process, and so, as the purifying stages get longer, the fewer minerals we get from the water. These minerals and ions are usually found in potable water, which could be a tap water, etc.

Choosing from these two may sound fruitless, but actually it is not. Your small acts like this will make a difference, because both have pros and cons which you could affect you, and because this will determine whether you get the best out of the water you get, or not. The choice is still up to you, if you are “to tap, or not to tap?”

[1] Tap water safe to drink

Think It Over (Part 2)

"Don't waste water!"

Basically, this message is what our site and several others have been rambling about. Quite appropriate, right? Sum it all up in one sentence, and there you go. No need to read every blog post.

That's where you're wrong. Not absolutely wrong, but not absolutely right either.

I once heard on a radio show how the universe can only hear positive thoughts. It helps you get what you want in due course; but it doesn't hear the word 'not' or something synonymous to it. Let's apply it to the phrase above, "Don't waste water!"

The universe only hears "Do waste water!". Not a very good idea to give to everyone right?

We should all be optimistic. Our site promotes saving water, but saving is not just the opposite of wasting. Saving, according to the dictionary, is to economize or avoid waste; to conserve of prevent the wasting of; or to store for future use. We encourage you, people who use water, to do these things --- and many more. We want to help you know ways of contributing, of making your efforts known, to the solution to this problem. We want to help you realize and analyze our present situation concerning one of our primary needs: water.

You need not go out of your ways to be able to do this. However, there are some people who have virtually nothing very productive to do at home, and those we encourage to make Herculean efforts to help solve this problem. You can join movements, charities, or for those busy bees, just support advocacies like this. :) A lot can be done with clicking. Clicking the right links and commenting on the right things will not only help you get knowledge about the realities and situations of the world, you can also get your opinions to be heard, like in this site!

So, go on, support this advocacy and let yourself be heard! :) :>

Views on Water Pollution

by a PSHS Teacher (Part 2)

Interview with Sir Vlad Lopez

Views on Water Pollution

by a PSHS Teacher (Part 1)

Interview with Ma'am Capundag

Hydrophobia

At first, when I first heard of the 'global water crisis', I wasn't shocked about it because if our population continued to grow, a global water crisis would surely happen. My first reaction was that of ignorance because I reckon that the water crisis would only occur at the worst, 2-5 centuries from my life time. Far from my time and besides, other more pressing environmental issues were at hand.

I was wrong. From the very start of my research about it, very alarming figures showed up. From the 6.7 Billion people in the world right now, already 1.1 Billion have 0 access to water while 2.6 Billion don't have access to sanitary water. Not so alarming? Well, it gets worse, from 16.4%, it will become 56.4% of the global population that will have totally no access to water by 2025, scientists say. So, from less than 1/5 of the global population, it rises to more than 1/2 in less than 20 years. So if we extend this trend, we can see that in 40 years time from now, more than 90% of the global population will have no water. Many might say that this prediction is somewhat flawed, I agree because many scientist say that it will be sooner, if we add the effects of pollution, climate change and global warming.

9 out every 10 people will have no water in fifty years tops, while 1-2 out that 10 already don't have water. People will have no water, so what? As it turns out humans can only survive without water for 1-2 weeks depending on the weather conditions and his physical activities. On the first 12 hours without water, a human will lose more than 50% of his physical strength. After a few days of that, he will first become regularly dizzy then he will start hallucinating and the person losses even his emotional and mental capacities. On the person's last days, seizures will occur frequently and his last moments, his internal organs will stop suddenly and then he's dead.

This has happened, is happening or will happen to 1-2 people for every ten people in the world. Chances are, you, the person reading this, is one of the 8-9 people who have water. But think about it, you may have water now but how will your chances fair when it becomes 5 out of every 10 or even 9 out of every 10 people and even if you're that lucky, how about your mom, your dad, your siblings, your friends, your loved ones. Will you or me be that lucky? Will our loved ones be that lucky?

Free H2O

Every meal is important and so is water. Remember hearing to drink at least 8 glasses of water everyday?

One day while eating lunch with my best friend in the school cafeteria, I heartily ate my dessert. We were on our way to class, when I remember I forgot to buy at least a drink. He hurried fast to fetch me a bottle of water. I thought he'd get me to drink a bottle of iced tea or something with lots of sugar.

The water went down my throat and all. It was cold, but refreshing. I always love to eat sweets and I was always reminded to drink a lot of water. To be honest, I think that I'm not able to satisfy my system with at least 8 glasses of water and I am always dehydrated too. It's not that I don't want water or neither I don't like its taste, it's just that I don't even remember to drink or maybe I wanted to drink something with flavor too.

Too long for reminiscing, but there is really that one thing that struck me as I drank it. I now realize even more the importance of water. It was the first time I felt that thirst, not realizing it earlier, but early enough. I needed lots of fluids after all, especially water.

And yeah... water? I remember having my classmates some water issues from school. I even refrained drinking from the water station or drinking fountain in my primary years. I often had a water jug, but I always had half-filled brought back home and mom scolding me for not drinking water. Maybe the fountain gave me trauma to drink water, but what trauma is more installed for people who can't drink water at all, because they don't have water or are terribly ill to intake water from mouth.

Don't worry the jug with half-filled water, I just used it to water the plants so as not to waste the content. I do pant and sweat, and it makes me think that I need more water for this.

I remember hearing a doctor from a radio program say that to be able to suffice the water needs, one must a least drink a glass of water every two hours in his day time. Water is important in the body. Body is also composed of water mostly. Water is used for excretion, nutrients and blood contents. Water gives life and calm to tension. Water quenches thirst.

If you are to go to a restaurant, I think that water is the cheapest drink on the menu. Drinking water is selling. Each drive stop, mini-groceries or shops have water as a consumer's product. Nowadays, water is sold in almost every shop and no more drinking water is for free. Take note also what type of drinking water, isotonic? Alkaline? Distilled, purified? Mineral? Or just simply bottled?!? Recycle those bottles so as no to pollute any land and water areas too.

But is there still free H2O nowadays? I meant the drinking water?

Free H2O could be more possible, maybe if there was abundant source of drinking water and no drops wasted, protected, saved and cleaned.

Free H2O??? Aquamergency!

Info 000

There are many present day problems and causes of water pollution. There are also many articles written and some unheard. Of course, for your interest and time given, it's best to entertain you with different articles and postings that are worth to look at and the message is clear, that water is important. In one of our next posts, we'll give you a hand of information on non-governmental or different groups that also voice out on WATER, such as the "SAVE THE LA MESA DAM" in 2006. We'll give you updates on some water news too.


The La Mesa Dam issue back 2006 is important to deal with. The La Mesa dam is one of the biggest and most used water dams in the Philippines, most especially the people in Metro Manila. To know more about this, you may visit their site at www.lamesaecopark.com.


Save water, Aquamergency...

Just because of that bottle.

Let me just give you an example on what may happen by not doing this simple thing of disposing your trashes properly.

The story goes like this.

One day, I threw an empty bottle on the sidewalk. No one dared to pick it up and throw it properly. Before the day ended, it rained. The bottle was washed away by the water. Other forms of trash were also washed away like plastic bags, food containers, and other disposable materials that we can just easily throw anywhere. The rain continued to pour down. There was flood because the drainage were clogged. A man was on his way home from his work. It was around 7pm. There was a heavy traffic on that night. He was disappointed. He arrived home with his pants and shoes wet. He said that when he was waiting for a bus, there was flood and he had no choice but to pass that area where there is flood in order to ride the bus. If he didn't do that, it would take him a few more minutes for another bus to come and he would be home late.

He was a single parent and he had one child. He had dinner with his son after changing his clothes. Days passed and the man started to feel ill. He was confined in the hospital. His son was already 14 years old at that time. He found out that his father got Leptospirosis. The doctor said that the disease was acquired because of contact of one person with waters contaminated with animal urine. His son remembered the night when his father arrived home with his shoes wet and his father had one small unhealed wound. His father's life eventually ended. Now, the child is an orphan and just stayed with his grandparents.

From then on, the life of this child changed. He grew up being rebellious, and did many barbaric acts. He used illegal drugs and was involved in criminal acts. He was arrested and his grandparents were not able to do something because they lacked money. He spent the remaining days of his life in jail.

Think about this. By just an act of not throwing your trash properly, one died. The future of one youth, and of being the hope of our country was wasted. If we would just realize how our acts would affect others, our community, and our environment.

Our simple acts may be the cause of large and serious problems happening in our society. Most things happen in chain reactions. One action leads to another. Especially if that action leads to another action which is not beneficial but destructive for us.

Just remember, we should think first before we do something.

Think about it. (Part 1)

Malaria, cholera ,dengue fever. Diseases that can inflict death. These are only a few waterborne diseases that we protect ourselves from. (waterborne diseases are different from water-based diseases; the latter are caused by infectious organisms who really have to spend part of their lives in the water.) Every time my family eats out, my parents never fail to make sure whether the water being served is distilled, purified, or from the tap. What is it with water that we are so afraid of?

When I started writing this article, the number of people who have died of water-related diseases in 2009 amounted to 246,752 [1]. Let's assume that half of them, or more than half, died from waterborne diseases. That's more or less than 123,376 --- a very big number considering we're just in the 3rd week of January. Think of how many times your trash might have ended up in a body of water people rely on for drinking. (Hint: a rainstorm can wash away your trash to the sea, and it can even cause overflowing of human waste-filled sewers.)

Two hundred five thousand, four hundred three billion liters of water [1] have been consumed as I write this article, and that's only for January 2009. How many liters have been contaminated that resulted to so many deaths?

Now that I've given you a couple of figures to think about, think about your future. What if you you turn on the shower and everything that comes out is black sludge? What if tomorrow, you're bed-ridden because of typhoid fever? Of intestinal bacteria?

We are not always in control of what goes around us; but we can always affect what happens. Water pollution is a very big factor in our lives. We NEED water in our lives, not just for drinking, but for so many other things: drinks for our pets, washing our hands, cooking our meals, treating our wounds, cleaning our own bodies, source of food. Many people depend on water for income: fishermen, food companies, fish vendors. Not only are we going to be personally affected by water pollution, economic problems will also likely arise.

I remember somewhere in 2005-2007 (alright, I admit, my memory's not good) when night after night, news about the spread of red tide would make it to the TV, not to mention the newspapers. My parents didn't buy fish for almost a week. We must be cautious, but then, is everyone as cautious as us?

Our world is 70% water, but less than 1% is actually available for human consumption--- the rest are contaminated. [2]
How sure are you that what you're drinking now is not part of the 69%?

NOTE: By the time I finished this article, which took about 40 minutes (due to chatting and reading other articles), about 500 other people have died due to water-related illnesses.

[1] Worldomemeters- real time world statistics
[2] Waterborne Illnesses in 3rd World Countries & The USA