October 15th, 2010
Don’t worry so much over war or hunger, the thing that’s killing more people than anything else is lack of water and basic sanitation.
Of course, we need to act on many issues, including poverty and diseases without cures, but it’s water that should be tugging at your heart. Perhaps you live in the U.S. or another country where lack of water isn’t a concern. If that’s the case, you probably rarely ever hear of or think about the 42,000 deaths that occur each week from lack of safe drinking water and unhygienic living conditions.
Of those 42,000 deaths, 90% are children whose bodies aren’t yet strong enough to fight off diarrhea or dysentery and other illnesses.
About one in eight people on this planet aren’t as blessed as you. They don’t have safe drinking water.
To change that, help spread the word about this issue at the dinner table and anywhere you roam online like Twitter or Facebook.
To donate a lifetime’s supply of drinking water for one person for just $25, visit water.org.
Some more stuff to ponder on Blog Action Day: Water:
Lots of us have safe tap water, but choose bottled instead. Bottled water is not only expensive, but it wastes valuable resources like 17 million barrels of oil a year for the production of disposable bottles, only 14% of which ever get recycled. Read more on this issue of our Bottled Water Addiction at Change.org, and consider investing in a water filter if you don’t like the tap taste.
The UN has declared water is a human right. Do you agree? If so, why aren’t we doing more to ensure this rights for the vulnerable?
(image via MorgueFile)
Filed under Healthy You | Comments (3)
[…] friend Peggy wrote about how unsafe water is the biggest killer – that’s before war and […]
I don’t know that I agree that it’s a right. Maybe it should be, but I think that for the people who have too much access, there’s too much waste, because it isn’t hitting them in the wallet. For too many people if it’s not a money issue, it’s not something to worry about. Why don’t we think past our wallets?
Hi Diana. Just getting back from a trip. How did I live without the Internet for a week?? 🙂
That’s a good point about taking water for granted because you don’t care about the water bill. Maybe water should cost more!