Blog Action Day is October 15, and this year's topic is water. Once you start doing a little research, you come to realize that it's a huge topic. So while I'm writing about a single water topic on my earth blog, A note from your Mother, I thought this would be a good place to simply highlight a variety of facts about this essential resource.
Did you know these facts about water?
1. In some organisms, up to 90 percent of their body weight comes from water.
2. Up to 60 percent of the human body is water.
3. The human brain is composed of 70 percent water.
4. Human lungs are nearly 90 percent water.
5. About 83 percent of our blood is water, which helps digest our food, transport waste, and control body temperature.
6. Each day humans must replace 2.4 litres (81.2 ounces) of water, some through drinking and the rest taken by the body from the foods eaten.
7. Unsafe drinking water and lack of sanitation kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war.
8. Nearly 1 billion people lack access to clean water. That's one in every six people on earth.
9. Every week, nearly 38,000 children under the age of 5 die from unsafe drinking water and unhygienic living conditions.
10. A report commissioned by the UN found that in the 21st century, water scarcity will become one of the leading causes of conflict in Africa.
11. Every day, women and children in Africa walk a combined total of 109 million hours to get water. They do this while carrying cisterns weighing around 40 pounds when filled in order to gather water that, in many cases, is still polluted.
12. The average American uses 159 gallons of water every day – more than 15 times the average person in the developing world. From showering and washing our hands to watering our lawns and washing our cars, Americans use a lot of water. To put things into perspective, the average five-minute shower will use about 10 gallons of water. Now imagine using that same amount to bathe, wash your clothes, cook your meals and quench your thirst.
12. It takes 6.3 gallons of water to produce just one hamburger. That 6.3 gallons covers everything from watering the wheat for the bun and providing water for the cow to cooking the patty and baking the bun. And that's just one meal. It would take over 184 billion gallons of water to make just one hamburger for every person in the United States.
13. Every iPhone requires half a liter (17 ounces) of water to charge. That may not seem like much, but with over 80 million active iPhones in the world, that's 40 million liters (over 10,566,882 gallons) to charge those alone.
14. That cotton t-shirt you're wearing right now took 1,514 liters (400 gallons) of water to produce, and your jeans required an extra 6,813 liters (1800 gallons).
15. The US, Mexico and China lead the world in bottled water consumption, with people in the US drinking an average of 200 bottles of water per person each year. And, over 17 million barrels of oil are needed to manufacture those water bottles, 86 percent of which will never be recycled.
16. More people have access to a cell phone than to a toilet. Today, 2.5 billion people lack access to toilets.
17. Every day, 2 million tons of human waste are disposed of in water sources. Around 90% of the developing world's waste water is still discharged untreated into local rivers and streams.
18. Water is also polluted by runoff from agriculture, as well as oil, grease and other toxic chemicals which result from urban sprawl.
19. Death and disease caused by polluted coastal waters costs the global economy $12.8 billion a year.
20. Today, 40% of America's rivers and 46% of America's lakes are too polluted for fishing, swimming, or aquatic life.
Many of these facts are from the Blog Action Day blog. For more information about water, a good place to start is water.org.
Let's not take this precious resource for granted.
