The Importance Of Clean Water

Water is something that every person on the planet needs, but most people do not realize the importance of. Clean water is needed for every living thing on earth to survive, including and especially human and animal survival. Apart from survival, water is needed for other basic wants, such as cooking, washing oneself and one’s clothes, recreation, and keeping plants alive in gardens and parks. Clean water has so many uses that are often taken for granted by ordinary people because of such easy access. Although the planet has a freshwater supply that is continually recycled and should consequently be sustainable, humans alter the water cycle with pollutants and overdrawing water supplies faster than natural processes can replenish them; it

Drinking polluted water is very hazardous to human health. Consumption of contaminated water can lead to nausea, vomiting, cramps, and diarrhea, which can be fatal over time (Halton, 2016). Water can be contaminated with so many things, including bacteria, e. coli. Nitrates, and herbicides and pesticides. Water must be filtered and treated properly to ensure that none of these contaminates are in one’s drinking water. One of the biggest and most recent examples of a catastrophe caused by contaminated water is the Flint Water Crisis. In April of 2014, the town of Flint changed their water source from Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Flint River. This water was contaminated with lead; therefore, for months, the residents of Flint were consuming dangerously high levels of lead (Ortiz, 2015). In children, lead in the bloodstream can cause behavior and leaning problems, lower IQ and hyperactivity, slowed growth, hearing loss, and anemia. In adults, exposure to contaminated lead can lead to cardiovascular effects, increased blood pressure, hypertension, decreased kidney function, and reproductive problems (Environmental Protection Agency, 2016). The residents of Flint were exposed to high levels of lead for a long period of time, so it is unknown how many people were effected and how

Streams, lakes, and oceans can all be polluted, but pollution can have a different effect on each. Streams can recover from moderate levels of degradable, oxygen-demanding wastes through dilution and bacterial biodegration. This can take several days to several weeks. This process is extremely helpful, but it does not work when a stream becomes overloaded with such pollutants or when drought, damming, or water diversion reduces its flow. This process also does not remove slowly degradable and nondegradable pollutants. Lakes and reservoirs are less effective at diluting pollutants. The flushing and changing of water in lakes can take from one to one hundred years, much longer than that of streams. Withdrawing from groundwater is a very important method of providing drinking water to people. Pollutants such as fertilizers, pesticides, gasoline, and organic solvents can seep into groundwater. The natural process of removal can take decades to thousands of years (Miller, 2014). Oceans can become polluted pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, detergents, oil, sewage, plastics, and other solids. These pollutants collect at the ocean’s depths where they are consumed by marine organisms. These pollutants can kill or mutate the marine life. Humans also end up consuming the fish contaminated by the pollutants, which can be very harmful (National Geographic, 2016). It is very important to keep all of the earth’s bodies