Study: Water-related deaths could

"Aquathin OP-ED Commentary"

     For the first time in the history or our industry that I can recall, this quick read article reports and agrees with a fundamental of what we have been advising all along...and you will see this digested in the near future down to focusing on POU (Point of Use = at the tap) and POE (Point of Entry = total home / structure) water treatment.

Here's the issue in a nutshell. A new community springs up and builds a central water treatment plant.  The community develops and expands. The water plant was not geared to handle certain heavy industrial consumers, or the waste from new hospital wings treating cancer patients with chemotherapy, or a chain or carwashes slug loading the sewer with grease-detergent-oil-heavy metals.....or the more than 10,000 new chemicals produced yearly in the U.S.....and there is no more room to expand the water plant to sustain the present and future pressures. So it treats as best it can, and sends it downstream arriving as someone elses problem. And all this in a country where the most advanced municipal water treatment technology exists. Its much worse in other parts of the world where infrastrucuture is old or environmental laws and practices do not exist or are shallow at best. I love my Aquathin !

Study: Water-related deaths could outweigh AIDS epidemic

     OAKLAND, CA — Water-related diseases could claim more than 76 million lives by 2020, more than the global AIDS pandemic, unless action is taken, according a study done by the Pacific Institute.

The report, Dirty Water: Estimated Deaths from Water-Related Diseases 2000-2020, concludes that even if the United Nations Millennium Goals to cut the proportion of people without clean drinking water by half are achieved, 34 million to 76 million people could perish over the next 20 years, said the Pacific Institute.  "Under the most optimistic scenario examined, the death toll from water-related disease is still staggering," said Peter H. Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute. "This largely hidden tragedy ranks as one of the greatest development failures of the 20th century."

The Pacific Institute's report said current development efforts, focusing on large, centralized water systems, are part of the problem.  "Far too much money has been spent on centralized, largescale water," said Gleick. Changing direction toward a "soft path" relying on smaller-scale systems designed, built, and operated by local groups could help, the Pacific Institute reported.

The best estimates of water-related deaths fall between 2 million and 5 million deaths per year; the majority are small children struck by virulent but preventable diarrhoeal diseases, the study said.

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Edited from Tech Bank 8/26/02