All About Water

The history of human civilization is enmeshed with the history of water. Water has guided civilization more than any other factor. Early civilizations were centered around water sources; the secure water supply of the Fertile Crescent enabled some of the first large-scale agricultural civilizations. Water allows people to sustain themselves and their animals and determines what can be grown and where. As civilizations learn how to better control water—to irrigate and to predict the weather, for instance—they learn how to grow. Even today we still center our civilizations around water. The Middle East is exploding with wars over clean water access. As the World Bank Vice President Serageldin famously stated, “Many of the wars of the twentieth century were about oil, but the wars of the next century will be about water.”

Reasons for the History of Water

Nowadays, after the growth of industries, clean drinking water doesn’t naturally occur. Scientists continually discover contaminants in fresh water sources and correlates between drinking contaminated water and health problems. Because we need water but it is impure, we have learned to treat water. However, the history of water filtration is not a recent one; water filtration began over 4000 years ago.

Milestones in the History of Water

Some milestones in the history of water include the invention of the microscope, the advent of municipal water treatment, the use of chlorine to purify water, and the Clean Water Act of 1972.

Early in the History of Water

The earliest recorded attempts to filter water date back to 2000 BC, to early Sanskrit writings of water purification methods. These methods include boiling water and filtering water through sand or charcoal filters. The Sanskrits’ biggest motive was to make water taste better, because they assumed that good-tasting water would also be clean. People didn’t yet realize that contaminated water caused disease, and they certainly couldn’t test for diseases in water.

Later Innovations in the History of Water

In 1590, the Dutch glasses-makers Zaccharias and Hans Janssen invented the forerunner to modern-day microscopes. A century later, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, “the father of microscopy,” advanced the Janssens’ invention to the extent that scientists could now view tiny living particles in water that had previously been thought clean. In nineteenth-century London, city officials first linked cholera to bad water quality. John Snow, a British scientist, confirmed cholera bacteria in the Broad Street Pump’s water, proving that taste and visual clarity doesn’t prove water’s pureness. After this event, the British government insisted upon filtering city water, a precedent for municipal water systems. The British municipal water system cleaned water partly by treating it with chlorine.

The History of Water Continues

In the 20^th century, people increasingly agreed that every person has the right to clean water. The Clean Water Act (CWA) of 1972 made it a law that every city in the United States must have a water treatment plant. The CWA forced industrial plants to become environmentally friendly and renewed interest in water filtration, making clean water a national goal. Today the history of water continues as we strive to bring clean water to places that still need it.

Chlorine in Water

Chlorine is commonly used to disinfect our water. However, chlorine in water can also harm us. Because of this, we need to learn how to remove the chlorine in water, or how to entirely replace chlorine usage in our water treatment.

Why Chlorine Is Added into Our Water Supply

Chlorine is well-known and widely used to disinfect our water. Chlorine in water deactivates various pathogenic microorganisms (like bacteria or viruses), which cause illness. Authorities chlorinate public water supplies in order to kill the hazardous bacteria present in our water or water pipes. In addition to disinfecting water, chlorine is also used to disinfect various home and hospital areas and to bleach fabrics. We have used chlorine in water as a disinfectant for over two hundred years.

How Chlorine in Water Can Hurt Us

Although chlorine can disinfect our water, it can also hurt us if ingested. Chlorine in water can form into toxins called trihalomethanes (THMs); THMs correlate with diseases like asthma, eczema, bladder cancer, and heart diseases. Studies have shown that drinking large amounts of chlorinated tap water dramatically increases pregnant women’s risk of miscarriages and birth defects.

How We Can Remove Chlorine from Water

Carbon filters remove chlorine, THMs, and other harmful contaminants from our water. Additionally, while they produce the same excellent water quality that electronic filters produce, carbon filters are much cheaper. You can also remove chlorine and other contaminants from water without a home filtration system by placing water in an uncovered container and leaving it inside your refrigerator for twenty-four hours.

Water Treatment Alternatives to Chlorine in Water

Although we need to disinfect our water, we don’t need to use chlorine to do so. Several Canadian and European cities are disinfecting their water using the ozone instead of chlorine. Some cities in the United States, like Las Vegas and Santa Clara, are also switching to this alternative. However, the easiest way to get rid of the chlorine in water is simply to filter it out.

Transporting Water

The United Nations’ Millennium Project

Water Goals of the Millennium Project

Water Goals in Rural and Urban Areas

Progress Toward Meeting Water Goals

Water Goals and Our Future

Saving Water in the Bathroom

Access to water has always been an important factor in the location of settlements, whether primitive or modern, human or animal, and the need for water is a universal part of life. Unfortunately, billions of people around the world still lack access to potable water.  Water shortages are usually defined as third-world phenomena, but shortages of clean water are also prevalent in the United States.  As the world’s population grows, humanity must recognize that water access is becoming an increasingly global concern.

Access to Clean Water

Access to water is vital, but access to clean water is even more critical.  Today, approximately one billion people do not have access to clean water, which has severely harmed the health and economic development of the most affected regions.  Further, according to UNICEF, lack of safe water is the world’s single largest cause of illness. Lack of clean water can cause afflictions such as river blindness, cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, and a number of other diseases and infections. The global water crisis is not unsolvable, though. Countries around the world are actively pursuing solutions such as reduction of pollution, infrastructure building, desalinization, improved irrigation, and more.

Data Concerning Water Usage

• A person needs 7.5 to 15 liters a day for survival. Included in this are figures for drinking water, hygiene and cooking.
• On average, women in Africa and Asia walk about 6 kilometers to collect water.
• More than 3½ million people die each year from water-related diseases.
• A child dies every 20 seconds from a water-related disease.

Access to Water and Sewage Treatment

In man’s effort to stay safe, he has found ways to treat water. Water treatment occurs before the water enters a house. Unfortunately, water treatment is so simplistic that many people are still concerned for population safety. Sewage treatment is done on used water before it re-enters the source, such as a river or under ground supply. Sewage treatment speeds the process of eutrophication, or the aging process of water, and creates favorable breeding grounds for disease that would not be as concentrated if nature took care of itself. Taking the larger particles from sewage water is acceptable, but the later-stage biological processes are what cause eutrophication.

Access to water and particularly, clean water will always present a major problem to the human race. Unfortunately, there are too many people needing too many resources from the planet.

The United States has been mining coal for hundreds of years. Today, 45 percent of our electricity still comes from coal-fired plants, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The seemingly inexhaustible supply of this carbon-based fuel comes at a heavy environmental cost. The resulting air, water and soil pollution has a serious impact on human health as well. Beyond currently-operating coal production, abandoned mines also pollute water. It is estimated that Pennsylvania has 2,400 miles of streams still being polluted from closed mines.

Types of Coal Mining

Coal can be extracted in two basic ways. Deep extraction requires digging shafts far underground that follow seams of coal underground. Strip mining involves clearing huge tracts of land of vegetation and stripping the top layer of coal from the earth’s surface. Strip mining is by far the most damaging in terms of coal pollutants. Destruction of trees and vegetation on entire mountaintops causes erosion and landslides as well as water pollution.

Coal Pollutants

The slag produced by the unprofitable part of strip-mined soil contains large amounts of toxic metals. When coal is extracted from the profitable strip-mined soil, great amounts of fresh water are used in the process. What’s left over is called sludge, and it is even more toxic than slag. High concentrations of mercury, arsenic, lead and selenium may be found in sludge, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Water and Air Pollution

Huge amounts of slag are dumped into stream beds, where they overwhelm the ecosystem and leach into aquifers that supply drinking water. Sludge, on the other hand, is stored in abandoned mines and aboveground facilities. The leaching problem is the same, with toxic metals entering the drinking water supply. These coal pollutants often go undetected because testing is not routinely carried out.

Environmental Effects

Destruction of river, stream and reservoir ecosystems is common in areas where coal mining is carried out. Coal pollutants from the wind-blown soil of deforested mountaintops contributes to acid rain elsewhere. Loss of habitat for nearby animals further damages the natural environment. Pollutants find their way into the food chain, deforming and poisoning species as they go. These pollutants reach the top of the food chain when humans consume vegetables, meat and fish.

Effects on Humans

The effects of coal pollutants are many and well documented by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Asthma and lung cancer can be traced to the inhalation of coal pollutants. Toxic metals in the water can cause liver problems, kidney failure, many types of cancer and lymphoma, as well as cirrhosis. High levels of selenium in water can cause pulmonary edema and death, and mercury and lead are particularly toxic for children. The EPA currently urges stricter regulations for dumping of coal slag and sludge to combat coal mining pollution.

What Are Water Wells?

Why Use Water Wells?

What Is Water?

The chemical formula for water is H₂O. This formula means that one molecule of water is made up of to two hydrogen atoms bonded with one oxygen atom. Oxygen is a negatively charged atom and hydrogen is positively charged, but when the electrons of these atoms combine to form a water molecule, the molecule’s charge is not evenly distributed: the molecule has a slight negative charge on its oxygen end and a slight positive on its hydrogen end. Because of this, water molecules are polar. This polarity causes water molecules to be electrostatically attracted to other water molecules, and also allows water molecules to dissolve other molecules.

What is Water: Polarity’s Effects

Polarity makes water molecules special. For instance, it causes water’s solid form, ice, to float atop its liquid form, water—and unusual chemical property. This happens because water molecules’ hydrogen bonds repulse other water molecules’ hydrogen bonds, which makes the solid water molecules be spaced further apart from each other than they were as liquid water molecules. This causes ice to be less dense than water, thereby causing ice to float.

What Is Water: Other Unusual Properties

When we wonder what is water, need to understand water’s also possesses some other interesting physical properties.

• Water has strong surface tension, high heat of vaporization, and high specific heat.
• Water dissolves more substances than any other liquid, and has therefore been nicknamed “the universal solvent.”
• Water is the only chemical compound on Earth’s surface that is naturally present as liquid, gas and solid.

What is Water: Water Is Necessary for Life

All of life’s biochemical reactions rely upon liquid water to occur. Without water, the world as we know it would not exist. The world’s temperature systems would be wildly different, chemical reactions would not occur, and organisms would not be able to maintain their cell membranes. In chemical reactions, water pushes non-polar compounds together. This hydrophobia is the basis for the creation and maintenance of cell membranes, which are necessary for all living organisms. Additionally, only water can bend enzymes into the proper shape for catalyzing the chemical reactions that we need to stay alive. What is water? Necessary for life. Us folks of Operation Hydros understand how important water is, and that’s why we’re fighting so hard to conserve it.