Here is a terrific article from Gen Green Life’s Blog called the 40 Facts About Water. We live in the beautiful state of California where unfortunately we do have and will continue to have a serious water problem. These are great facts to know, understand and think about each day. We had to pass this one along….. good stuff!!!!

FACT #1: While more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, 97.5 percent of that total is salt water. From the remaining 2.5 percent that is freshwater, almost 70 percent is frozen in ice caps and
glaciers.

FACT #2: Less than 1% of the world’s fresh water (or about 0.007% of all water on earth) is readily accessible for direct human use.

FACT #3: The United States uses about 346,000 million gallons of fresh water every day.

FACT #4: The United States uses nearly 80 percent of its water for irrigation and thermoelectric power.

FACT #5: Agriculture is the main user of water across the globe, accounting for over 70% of all use.

FACT #6: On average, people in the United States use more than 105 gallons (400 liters)—in Europe use more than 52 gallons (200 liters)—of water per day. Flushing the toilet accounts for the largest amount of this water.

FACT #7: 85% of the energy used to machine-wash clothes goes to heating the water.

FACT #8: Showers account for 22 percent of individual water use in North America. Reducing your shower time by 5 minutes will save more than 4,200 gallons of water each year.

FACT #9: 3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease. 84% of water-related deaths are in children ages 0 - 14.

FACT #10: 98% of water-related deaths occur in the developing world.

FACT #11: While basic needs vary, the minimum daily requirement for survival is about 5.28 gallons (20 liters) per person. Most of the 1.1 billion people categorized as lacking access to clean water use 1.3 gallons (5 liters) a day—one-tenth of the average daily amount used in rich countries to flush toilets.

FACT #12: When a European person flushes a toilet or an American person showers, he or she is using more water than is available to hundreds of millions of individuals living in urban slums or areas of the developing world.

FACT #13: A lack of water has driven up the use of wastewater for agricultural production in poor urban and rural communities. More than 10% of people worldwide consume foods irrigated by wastewater that can contain chemicals or disease-causing organisms.

FACT #14: Water scarcity occurs even in areas where there is plenty of rainfall or freshwater. How water is conserved, used and distributed in communities, and the quality of the water available can determine if there is enough to meet the demands of households, farms, industry and the environment.

FACT #15: Water scarcity affects one in three people on every continent of the globe. The situation is getting worse as needs for water rise along with population growth, urbanization and increases in household and industrial uses.

FACT #16: Almost one fifth of the world’s population (about 1.2 billion people) live in areas where the water is physically scarce. One quarter of the global population also live in developing countries that face water shortages due to a lack of infrastructure to fetch water from rivers and aquifers.

FACT #17: Nearly 97 percent of the world’s water is saltwater or otherwise undrinkable. Another 2 percent is held in ice caps and glaciers. That leaves just one percent for all of humanity’s needs – agricultural, residential, industrial, etc. – as freshwater.

FACT #18: At least 1 billion people must walk three hours or more to obtain drinking water. For example, in Mexico, 15 percent of the population must haul or carry water. Even closer to home, nearly 2 percent of U.S. homes still do not have running water.

FACT #19: In North America and other developed nations, persistent industrial and municipal pollution pose a significant threat to water supplies. According to the EPA, 218 million Americans live within ten miles of a polluted lake, stream, or coastal area, while forty percent of the country’s waters are unsafe for fishing, swimming, or supporting aquatic life.

FACT #20: Each day, the sun evaporates 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) tons of water.

FACT #21: In a 100-year period, an average water molecule spends 98 years in the ocean, 20 months as ice, about two weeks in lakes and rivers, and less than a week in the atmosphere.

FACT #22: One inch of rain falling on one acre of land is equal to about 27,154 gallons of water.

FACT #23: The 250 million U.S. residents living today have access to about the same amount of water that all 4 million U.S. residents did 200 years ago.

FACT #24: If present consumption patterns continue, two out of every three people on Earth will live in water-stressed conditions by the year 2025.

FACT #25: As water shortages in the American Southwest increase in frequency and severity, the region faces a return to conditions from the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

FACT #26: Human induced changes in the Earth’s atmosphere could spawn a continuous drought in the Southwest and impact a drier climatology over the next 90 years.

FACT #27: A contributing factor to current conditions in the Southwest includes agreements made among California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming in 1922 during an unusually wet period, allocating more water from the Colorado River than is currently available.

FACT #28: If all plumbing fixtures in the United States were replaced with water-conserving fixtures, we could save 3.4 to 8.4 billion gallons of water a day.

FACT #29: One leaky faucet drip per second can waste 2,000 gallons of water a year.

FACT #30: Approximately 85 percent of U.S. residents receive their water from public water facilities. The remaining 15 percent supply their own water from private wells or other sources.

FACT #31: Households turn on their faucets an average of 70 times daily. It is estimated that up to 50 percent of the water families use could be saved by implementing simple conservation methods.

FACT #32: More than half of all Americans drink bottled water; about a third of the public consumes it regularly. Many millions of people use bottled water as their chief or exclusive drinking water source.

FACT #33: Bottled water sales have tripled in the past 10 years, to about $4 billion a year.

FACT #34: People spend from 240 to over 10,000 times more per gallon for bottled water than they typically do for tap water.

FACT #35: According to government and industry estimates, about one fourth of bottled water is bottled tap water (and by some accounts, as much as 40 percent is derived from tap water) — sometimes with additional treatment, sometimes not.

FACT #36: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has strict water quality standards for tap water, but the EPA does not oversee bottled water. Bottled water sold across state lines is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

FACT #37: The FDA’s rules completely exempt 60-70 percent of the bottled water sold in the United States from the agency’s bottled water standards, because FDA says its rules do not apply to water packaged and sold within the same state. Even when bottled waters are covered by FDA’s specific bottled water standards, those rules are weaker in many ways than EPA rules that apply to big city tap water.

FACT #38: FDA regulations do not prevent bottling companies from drawing water next to industrial sites, underground storage tanks, or dumps.

FACT #39: Coca Cola’s Dasani and Pepsi’s Aquafina are tap water coming from places like Queens, NY and Jacksonville, FL with some additional treatment.

FACT #40: According to a four-year study of bottled water about one third of the bottled waters tested contained significant contamination (i.e., levels of chemical or bacterial contaminants exceeding those allowed under a state or industry standard or guideline) in at least one test.

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