USA Water Filter Blog

One of the most common complaints about living in the Norman area is the quality of the drinking water. The taste is suspect, and there’s always some rumor about it being generally unsanitary.

To be honest, many of us on the editorial board are guilty of the same complaints.

But for approximately one in eight people worldwide, just having access to drinkable water is a constant struggle.

The United Nation’s 2006 Human Development Report reported that horrifying number, and the same research showed the global water crisis has claimed more lives than any violent conflict in world history.

For the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, one in five is without access to clean water, according to UNICEF’s 2005 State of the World’s Children report.

Recently, researchers at OU have been given a chance to help combat this problem by adapting a water purification technology developed for a local source into a system that can purify the polluted water source of a village in Bolivia.

This project will be featured in OU WaTER Center’s International WaTER Conference, which started Monday and brings international speakers on water issues to campus.

Unclean drinking water spreads diseases and lowers the overall health of populations.

The UN reported that at any given time, almost half the world’s hospital beds are filled with patients stricken by diseases associated with unsafe drinking water and inadequate sanitation.

The World Health Organization has calculated that about 1.8 million children die each year from a lack of clean drinking water — one death every eight seconds.

You can contribute to efforts to provide clean drinking water to everyone. Check out TheWaterProject.org to donate or help spread awareness of this widespread problem. Or go to CharityWater.org to learn more about the water crisis.

Also, try adapting some of these suggestions for better conserving water in your daily life:

• When hand-washing dishes, don’t let the water run while rinsing. One sink can hold wash water and the other rinse water.

• Run your clothes washer and dishwasher only when full to save up to 1,000 gallons a month.

• Keep a pitcher of water in the refrigerator instead of running the tap.

• Designate one glass for your drinking water each day or refill a water bottle.

• Turn the shower head off while shampooing your hair.

• Check to make sure your taps aren’t dripping when you’re done using them.

And next time you feel like complaining about having to buy a water filter to make your readily available tap water taste better, take a few seconds to think about those around the world who every day must choose between thirst and disease.

http://www.oudaily.com/news/2011/oct/25/editorial-drinkable-water-privilege/

 

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Ramesh Kumar Yadav ran a readymade clothes outlet in UP’s Ballia town till 2007. Then, embarrassed by a rash of white spots that began dotting his body inviting curious stares from customers, he shut shop and returned to his village of New Durjanpur, barely 5km from town. His condition has worsened since with many of the spots turning into lesions. Yadav is not the lone sufferer in his village of 20,000 people. The village, like several others in the area, has been fighting a losing battle with arsenic that has poisoned its drinking water.

Yadav’s brother Pappu was afflicted by a similar condition in 2008. He visited a doctor atBanaras Hindu University who gave him no medicines but offered a rather simple solution: Give up using water. Over thousands of years, arsenic has been washing down from theHimalayas with the Ganga water as sediment. In the plains, this arsenic has been leaching into the ground. It remained within permissible limits and did no harm till around the 1970s when, concerned over deaths in the Gangetic belt caused mainly by the unhygienic pattern of water consumption and poor sanitary conditions, the government and Unicef sank millions of tubewells.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-10-31/india/30341372_1_arsenic-drinking-water-ground-water

 

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A new study from the United States has found that a chemical found in many plastics in use every day could be causing behavioural andemotional problems in unborn baby girls in later life. Previous studies have shown that biosphenol (or BPA), which is often used in the manufacture of tin cans and plastic water bottles, is associated with a greater risk ofcardiovascular disease and diabetes.

This new research involved examining urine samples from pregnant 244 women and again at birth, comparing them to samples from their children when aged between one and three. BPA was shown to be present in 85 per cent of the women’s samples and in more than 96 per cent of the samples from their children. Maternal BPA concentrations were revealed to be about the same between the first sample and birth.

Although none of the children had clinically abnormal behaviour, some had more behaviour problemsthan others, allowing the scientists to investigate the relationship between a mother’s and their child’s BPA concentrations and the different behaviours.

http://www.diabetes.co.uk/news/2011/Oct/chemical-in-plastics-increases-diabetes-risk-and-behavioural-problems-95087668.html

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More than a thousand plastic water bottles are purchased on campus every day, and countless more are discarded. One UA group is asking students to stop and think before they throw their bottles in the trash.

According to a study done last year by Students for Sustainability, approximately 1,008 water bottles are bought on campus every day. Between 63 and 95 bags of water bottles are collected after each home football game by the organization, and 1,050 water bottles were collected after the game against Northern Arizona University on Sept. 3 alone.

Natalie Lucas, the executive program director of Students for Sustainability, said the group promotes recycling and reduction of waste through various projects. The group wants to make students think more about how many water bottles they buy and what they do when they are finished with them.

http://www.wildcat.arizona.edu/index.php/article/2011/11/bottles_a_focus_for_ua_group

 

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From Cornell to Stanford, college campuses across the U.S. are moving away from providing disposable plastic water bottles in vending machines, in cafeterias and during events like football games and student orientations.

To date, over a dozen colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada have campus-wide bans of the plastic bottles. A dozen more have partially halted bottle water sales to certain campus departments, and hundreds of schools have installed multiple “hydration stations”, where students and faculty can refill their own bottles. Some of the bans have resulted from student activism, while others have been a calculated effort by school administrators to save money. The bans can be tricky, however, when in conflict with exclusive beverage agreements with companies like Coke or Pepsi, who provide Dasani and Aquafina bottled waters, respectively.

In an effort to boost faltering sales, Coca-Cola launched a marketing campaign for Dasani last year featuring aPlantBottle made of 30% “plant based materials” (read: sugarcane ethanol from Brazil).  The new packaging is recyclable and provides a 25% reduction in carbon emission, compared to traditional plastic bottles. Compared to tap water, however, the new Dasani bottle still emits 2,000 times the carbon emissions, and costs 2,000 times as much. Apparently students just aren’t buying it.

http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/10/college-campuses-dump-disposable-water-bottles/

http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/10/college-campuses-dump-disposable-water-bottles/

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SASKATOON (CUP) — On Oct. 6, Calgary’s St. Mary’s University College joined schools like the University of Winnipeg, Queen’s and the University of Ottawa when it banned the sale of bottled water on its campus. The Council of Canadians Acting for Social Justice only lists six schools in Canada that have made this move, though they did not have St. Mary’s on their list.

The school, which emphasizes social justice as part of its educational experience, chose water as its theme for the year. According to its vision statement, St. Mary’s aims to help “students to lead with integrity, to meet the future with confidence, intellectual acuity, moral conviction and a passion for social justice and the common good.”

Communications coordinator Mackenzie Cann said the school’s social justice committee began working on the bottled water ban 18 months ago.

“In 2010, the UN made a declaration that clean drinking water is a basic human right,” Cann said. “They used this to back their idea.”

At St. Mary’s, the focus of the ban is geared toward the commodification of water rather than toward the environmental impact, though the campus has installed water bottle-refilling stations that count how many single-use bottles are being saved.

http://cupwire.ca/articles/48618

 

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