As I watch the news headlines give a day by day drug war death toll, I ran across an interesting, yet tragic fact: Dirty water has killed and continues to kill more people than any act of violence or war in the world.
“The simple dirty truth is more deaths are caused by dirty contaminated water than any form of violence, including war.
-UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAM (UNEP)
According to the report, entitled “Sick Water?” the lack of unpolluted water kills 1.8 million children under 5 each year. Imagine 1.8 million babies, dead, each and every year.
More than half the world’s hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from diseases associated with contaminated water. Diarrhea, alone, kills more than 2.2 million people annually.
UNEP said that 2 million tons of garbage, which pollute more than 2000 tons of water daily, have left huge dead zones that smother coral reefs and fish.
Much of the waste originates from developing countries, pulling 90 percent of its raw sewage.The report recommends recycling systems and water treatment plants.
” If the world is to thrive, let alone to survive on a planet of 6 billion people heading to over 9 billion by 2050, we need to get collectively smarter and more intelligent about how we manage waste, including wastewaters.
-Achim Steiner, UN undersecretary general and UNEP executive director.
Access to safe drinking water is recognised as a basic human need . In Mexico, however, reliable access to clean drinking water is a problem for many of the country’s 111 million inhabitants. Major investments in water projects are now being made to guarantee that at least 95 percent of the population has access to clean drinking water by 2012.
In northern Mexico, fresh natural water resources are both polluted and scarce. In the central and far south-eastern regions, water is inaccessible and poor quality. In fact, access to clean water has become such a problem in Mexico that the government considers it a national security issue. Providing a reliable supply of clean water has been high on the government’s agenda since early 2008. New water purification projects are underway throughout the country.
