Sunday, October 11, 2009

Is Access to Clean Drinking Water A Human Right or a Privilege?

By Katadino Fitorio

The answer to that question depends on the geographic location of the person who's answering. One certain thing is that water is a scarce resource. While water scarcity is not physically felt in countries like Canada or the US, there are other problems related to water consumption.

In a report published in 2005 by EWG (Environmental Working Group) , more than 230 million American citizens were exposed to 260 different pollutants in their tap water. This is when a water filtration system like the Katadyn Hiker Pro, comes to the rescue. Many scientists in America took part in this independent study over a 2 year period of time. They tested greater than 21 million tap water tests, and went to over 4000 water treatment plants.

Within the 260 contaminants that were discovered, over half of them were unregulated by the government. When people knew what was happening, states that were worried, like Florida, Wisconsin, Arizona, etc. took drastic steps to fix this contamination problem.

Still, there are even more concerns about bottled water. EWG tried to perform an equivalent study on bottled water quality. Of 228 bottled water suppliers, more than half declined to give information about their water sources and treatment methods. This secrecy raises alarms for both consumes and health care practitioners. In bottled water samples that did under go testing, 38 separate chemical pollutants were found.

Some brands like ?Sam's choice? sold by Wal-Mart, presented cancer-causing chemicals, that exceeded all existing safety standards for drinking water.

It becomes clear, that bottled water is not a safer alternative to tap water. In fact it may be more dangerous, because little is known and disclosed on the origins of the water and the filtering procedures.

In places like Africa, Europe, and Latin America, this situation is even more adverse. If you're in a part of the world where drinking the water might kill you, boil it or run it through a filtration system like "Katadyn hiker pro" before use.

The World Health Organization has reported that, more than 1.3 billion people don't have access to any drinking water. Unsanitary conditions have made natural waters undrinkable and tap water is too dangerous to drink.

Water is something that is a wonderful treasure, but through environmental negligence and pollution, water can become an extremely dangerous weapon. Because of diseases like E.Coli and Cholera, which are water born diseases, 1.8 million people die every year.

People are now realizing how important it is to secure themselves and their families by filtering their drinking water properly and paying close attention to what they drink.Author Box

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