Earth Day and Clean WAter

In light of Earth Day (April 22), The University of Florida has created an infographic “Five Water Purification Designs for Third World Communities” to help people visualize five water purification designs that can benefit developing nations, according to ufonline.ufl.edu.

The infographic highlights statistics reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) which states 748 million people lack access to safe drinking water sources, an estimated 1.8 billion people use a fecally contaminated source for drinking water, 2.5 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation facilities and over 840,000 people die from water-related diseases each year.

“Contaminated water is the number one cause of death in developing countries, causing diseases such as cholera, hepatitis, typhoid fever, malaria, ascariasis, dengue fever and many other deadly illnesses,” states the introduction to the infographic. “

In fact, contaminated water is the number one public health concern globally based on its impact to society, according to the WHO.  Fortunately, the WHO estimates that 10 percent of the global disease burden could be prevented with improved water supply and sanitation.

In light of this, a number of innovations and technologies are providing growing solutions to this problem.”

The infographic highlights five purification solutions including: UV, solar purification, ceramic filters, a water-purifying bicycle and personal filter straws.

It is worthwhile reproducing in this format.  Not all methods are equal in efficacy, but having clean water is just so important on developing areas of the world, as well as after natural catastrophes, which do seem to occur so often.

See below for the infographic:

You can find more information, as well as the infographic, here.