You wake up on a normal day.

  • Brush your teeth and use 1 liter of water.
  • Washing your hands and use 2 liters of water.
  • Take a shower, 200 liters

We use lots of water every day in America.  We just turn on the faucet.  We even take water for granted.  People in Africa live differently.  Young girls walk 2-4 hours a day, just to get water for their family.  Even the, the water may not be clean.  The weight of water burdens women in Africa as they carry and be equal to maximum baggage weight allow by airlines.  That’s a whopping 44 pounds.  The countries with the least access to water are Afghanistan, Somalia and Papua New Guinea.  Millions of people are sick, especially women and children, from water related diseases.

After an emergency such as a flood, hurricane or earthquake, drinking water may not be safe or even available.  As a result, residents have to find new sources of drinking water and figure out how to make it cleaner.  This problem exists for almost one billion people.

 

In America, we clean our water with seven steps.

  1. Filtration which removes fish, leaves and trash.
  2. Coagulation which gets rid of mud, bacteria and other particles.
  3. The water stands still so bad stuff settles at the bottom.
  4. Water goes through sand or gravel to remove algae an chemicals.
  5. Chlorine is added to kill remaining bacteria.
  6. Air forced through water to reduce gross smells and tastes.
  7. Sodium and/or lime is added.

Only half the world’s population gets tap water in their homes.  This is a major improvement since 1990 when 1.6 billion people didn’t have drinking water.  The problem exists because many people live in poverty where there is no clean water.  Sometimes the overpopulated areas don’t have enough fresh water for everyone.  Humans can survive without food for many days, but without water, they won’t last even 2 days.  Did you know that the human body is 2/3s water?  Sadly every day 10,000 children under 5 years old, dies from a water-related illness.

A potential solution would be building more wells, desalination plants, melting icebergs for more freshwater (but scientists think this will be almost impossible to do) and pipes to take water/sewage in and out of homes.  One simple thing that a kid can do is to save water by turning off the faucet.

This article was written using a collaborative researching and writing process.  2 or 3 students from 4 different classes gathered information on this one topic and then work together to pick the most important information and write this final report.  Thanks to Shelley Wright for sending our teacher the idea of Google Jockey.
Photo licensed under CC Attribution:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/bsush/6612157415/