Blog Action Day 2010 - Water

The people running Blog Action Day’s Water campaign sent me these five salient facts.

1. Unsafe drinking water and lack of sanitation kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Unclean drinking water can incubate some pretty scary diseases, like E. coli, salmonella, cholera and hepatitis A. Given that bouquet of bacteria, it’s no surprise that water, or rather lack thereof, causes 42,000 deaths each week.

3. 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.

I think many of us in Western Europe view water as some kind of poor person’s drink. Most very rarely consume the stuff, preferring alcohol or squash or fizzy pop/soda – all of which contain sugar. This is probably why we have such a problem with obesity. We should be drinking eight glasses of water per day to flush out all the toxins in our body and we have access to pure, clean drinking water at the turn of a tap but we do not use the facility, preferring to feed our plants and lawns or wash our cars in it and then buying expensive bottled water to quench our own thirst. It’s quite a conundrum.

When we go abroad, we worry about the quality of the water only in terms of brushing our teeth, having ice in our drinks and washing our salads; many of us falling victim to Delhi Belly or Spanish Tummy or whatever colloquialism relates to the country in question. We very rarely spare a thought for people in the third world who regularly have to consume bacteria-laced cocktails just to stave off dehydration.

4. More people have access to a cell phone than to a toilet. Today, 2.5 billion people lack access to toilets. This means that sewage spills into rivers and streams, contaminating drinking water and causing disease.

Having spent the weekend in a house with five other adults trying to share one toilet, I appreciate my home’s en suite even more. The idea of having to try to poop without a toilet at all is only brought home when we go to outdoor concerts and complain about splash-back when we have to visit a latrine or in France where, often, the only option is to use a hole in the ground as a public convenience. That’s still better than what’s on offer to millions of people around the world.

5. 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. Aside from putting a great deal of strain on their bodies, walking such long distances keeps children out of school and women away from other endeavors that can help improve the quality of life in their communities.

The very idea of having to walk miles just to reach clean drinking water… and then having to carry it back without resorting to a motorised vehicle…? Groups like charity: water and Water.org work tirelessly to bring water access to the developing world and earlier this year, the UN declared access to clean water a human right. I seem to recall that my local water authority runs a program where you can pay just a few pounds every month to help in this endeavour.

As I research a piece about the effects of drinking sufficient water every day to prevent cellulite, it seems somehow crass to associate such a basic right with a very Western complaint, bearing in mind that the majority of the world’s population still cannot consume enough to retain their health.