World Water Day 2019

Photo credit to Water.org

Here at Divinia Water, we celebrate our most precious resource everyday, but with World Water Day upon us, we thought we’d give you 10 important facts about water to help you commemorate the H20 you know and love.

10. Clean Water is a Human Right. The United Nations in 2010 recognized “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights. (1)

9. She. Made. Harry. Eat. Onions. This is the phrase my dad helped me memorize in grade school to help with the names of the Great Lakes. From west to east, they are: Superior, Michigan, Huron (Shout out to my former residence in Alpena, MI.), Erie, and Ontario. At more than six quadrillion gallons, the five Great Lakes make up one-fifth of the freshwater surface on the planet. (4) They also make for some very humid summers. I know from experience.

8. The longest river in the world is the Nile River in northeastern Africa. It runs approximately 4,132 miles, or 6,650 kilometers. (6)

7. The Amazon River in South America has the largest watershed, or drainage basin, in the world. The basin contains about 2.7 million square miles, approximately 7 million square km. (7)

6. Water makes up a major part of the human body. Babies are born with up to 78-percent water. That drops to about 65-percent after the first year. The organs in our bodies that feature the most water are: lungs (83%), brain and heart (73%), and muscles and kidneys (79%). (8)

5. An estimated 2.1 billion people live without safe water at home. (1)

4. Approximately one-third of Americans might be drinking water contaminated with non-stick PFAS chemicals. (5)

3. There could be arsenic in your mineral water. Did you know arsenic is a mineral? The EPA defines Mineral Water as “ground water that naturally contains 250 or more parts per million of total dissolved solids.” (2) The State of Idaho recognizes the harmful effects of arsenic in drinking water, “Most arsenic in drinking water comes from natural rock formations. Water that encounters rock formations can dissolve arsenic and carry it into underground aquifers, streams, and rivers that may be used as drinking water supplies. Arsenic deposited on the ground from industrial or agricultural uses tends to remain in the top few feet of soil for a long time and is not likely to have a significant impact on most aquifers. When dissolved in water, arsenic has no smell, taste, or color, even at high concentrations.” (3)

2. The EPA recognizes spring water as groundwater. “Spring water is collected as it flows to the surface or via a borehole.” (2)

1. Around 159 million people collect their drinking water from surface water, such as ponds and streams. (1)

1. https://www.worldwaterday.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/WWD2019_factsheet_EN_vs4_29Jan2019.pdf

2. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-11/documents/2005_09_14_faq_fs_healthseries_bottledwater.pdf

3. http://www.deq.idaho.gov/water-quality/drinking-water/pws-monitoring-reporting/contaminants/arsenic/

4. https://www.livescience.com/29312-great-lakes.html

5. https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/20/politics/epa-andrew-wheeler-clean-water-speech/index.html

6. https://www.britannica.com/place/Nile-River

7. https://www.britannica.com/place/Amazon-River

8. https://water.usgs.gov/edu/propertyyou.html