REPORT7

With the population growing larger every year, and greenhouse gasses making the earth warmer, water is quickly becoming polluted, dried up, and even dangerous. Medically, we need to stop the spread of pollution, and learn how to keep water evenly distributed to all of the world, keep it clean and safe for everyone, and stop water from running out, because earths most renewable resource should not have to be renewed. While we are concerned with gasoline prices and availability, electric cars use three times more water than a regular car uses gas. Not that we should use gas cars, but people don’t seem to realize we might have the same problem for water that we have now with gas. Do we really want water costing 4$ a gallon? Israel, Africa, even some places in the United States don’t have enough water in general, not to mention clean water. Arkansas is running out of water. This is an example of how even places in the United States have water deprivation, and everybody needs help. Some ways we can improve water is to develop more ways to clean water without chemicals so that when we purify water, we don’t make the water dangerous. People have environmental teams, but they only have like three people, people should get more involved with environmental issues because they are living in the environment, and we have to take care of it. Some tap water (supposedly cleaned) causes such things as birth defects and cancer. Some ways to clean water without chemicals are chlorine tablets, silver, filters, iodine, however these all have certain flaws, what medical experts need is a way to completely purify water without repercussions. There is a new machine to purify water without chemicals, but it is nowhere near powerful enough to purify an entire water source. Cleaning water with chemicals is just as dangerous as polluted water. Without chemicals, water can be dangerous to healthy people, and people who already have diseases like, HIV Aids. Drinking water can have bacteria, radioactive particle, chemicals, and parasites. But when we use chemicals to try and purify water, there are also health risks. Chlorine causes irritation, haloacetic acid causes an increase cancer risk, and copper damages the liver and kidney, and many, many more organic chemicals as well. If you click on this link you can see the ratio of clean water to polluted water in Asia, Europe and Africa. Every single one has more polluted areas than clean drinking water areas, except for Oceania, where the populations that have clean and polluted water was equal. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE40&SID=5&iPin= SVR1207&SingleRecord=True. This should not be the case. Some water is filtered through sand, rocks, coal, and other sediments, these get out dirt and such, but thinks like salt and metals cannot be removed through these filters. Chemicals used to clean water are mostly used to kill bacteria. However while doing so they create bacteria of their own. Chlorine is used in most water facilities, and it is only recently that people have called into question the use of chlorine because water started to taste funny. Another method of filtering water is water softening. Water softening removes magnesium and salt that makes water ‘hard’ and difficult to wash with. There are many ways that normal people can help every day. In New York City we take advantage of the water we have, there is basically an everlasting supply. But most people around the world, even in America, don’t have enough water. Israel, Asia, Africa, even in places like Arkansas don’t have enough or the proper amount of water. Saving water is an easy thing to do. When you brush your teeth, don’t leave the water running, shorten your showers, only ask for water in restaurants if you really need it, because even though we have all this clean water, other places are not getting enough healthy water because we are using to much of ours. We are not used to not drinking tap water when we are pregnant because we are scared of birth defects, or tasting chlorine in our water, but if we did have those problems, we would do everything we could to stop it. So why don’t we help some other people with that problem. If we have to treat other people the way we want to be treated, then surly the most important thing is to protect people, and protecting peoples water, something essential to everyone, is a good start to helping the world, and the adults of tomorrow. If we don’t clean water today the next generation may suffer severe medical problems. This commercial illustrates why we should clean up the environment and make water safe for everyone. http://youtube.com/watch?v=s-_LBXWMCAM Think about this next time you buy a bottle of water, and think about what you can do personally. Oberlin College invested millions of dollars in a “green house.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/education/26green.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=Oberlin%20College&st=cse&scp=1 This house only uses one low energy refrigerator, has times showers, low water toilets that they put in extra water from the showers so as not to waste, and is completely earth friendly. On top of the shower is a picture of John Edwards, because he had the best global warming campaign. The goal is to stop global warming by reducing carbon emissions. The students say, “It’s not about telling people, ‘You have to do this, you have to do that…It’s about fitting sustainability into our own lives”. This is an amazing thing to do, especially with the showers and toilet. If we all just help out a little, we can save a lot of water. There is an amazing video here about how to be greener and about the green house. All in the entire world is in a big problem, and untimely we need more medical research done on water and the effects of water and how we can help. Hopefully this has made you want to help.