Water Pollution

By: Gavin F.

 

 

 A study shows that in 2025, only four years from now, half the world’s population will not have clean sustainable drinking water. Water pollution is a growing source of human extinction, and it needs to be stopped.

Right now over 1 billion people live without clean drinking water, and almost all rivers in Asia are polluted. You are very lucky to have good clean drinking water because a lot of people live without clean water, and it has a detrimental impact on their society. Mark Rober is a former NASA engineer, partly responsible for the Curiosity Rover going to Mars; he said about water pollution, “I am so bummed that over 2 billion people in the world don’t have access to clean drinking water.” I know you’re saying, why can’t they fix it themselves? The people that don’t have clean and sustainable water don’t have the resources to do it themselves, and a lot of them don’t have the money to make a water treatment facility.

A study shows that 80% of wastewater in America goes into the ecosystem. That has a very big effect on people that need that clean water but can’t have it because wastewater is being put into rivers and lakes. A study found that water pollution kills over 450,000 people each year and over 2 billion people get sick from untreated drinking water. A lot of the time people don’t even realize their water is toxic or has bad particles in it because they either don’t have a good filter for their tap water or their pipes can be made out of lead, which is toxic to humans. Kids in Africa go through excruciating pain and suffering to get more than 40 pounds of dirty water from sources over four miles away from their homes.

There are also different types of water pollution. There is Chemical pollution, Groundwater pollution, Microbiological pollution, Nutrient pollution, Oxygen-depletion pollution and Surface water pollution. A study compared how many people didn’t have access to clean drinking water in 2015 and found that over 1 billion people live without drinking water.  The most recent study conducted in 2018 found that over 2 billion people now live without clean water, and that was over 1 billion new people without drinking water.

First, you can donate to https://generosity.org/, or you can help people in need of clean water. You can also do stuff that doesn’t cost money like throw trash in garbage cans and throw recycling in recycling bins to reduce the amount of plastic being thrown in the ocean. Two, you can throw fertilizer back into the grass because a lot of the time fertilizer is being thrown into the grass very poorly, and some of that fertilizer can end up in the water; you might ask, what is so bad about fertilizer being thrown in the water? Well, if you did not know already fertilizer is very toxic for our water, and if fertilizer gets into our water and the water is not treated correctly chances are you will die. Three, try to keep oils out of sewage drains because oil is one of the main causes of water pollution. Individuals are not the main cause of oil in our water; it is mostly big oil companies illegally throwing oil into our oceans and rivers.

Water pollution is still a very big problem that needs to be fixed and needs to be fixed fast or the whole world is at risk. You don't have to help every single day. You can take a little time out of your day and read some articles about water pollution and then see what you can do.  You can save the lives of others.