U.N.: "Sick Water" Deadlier than War

(CBS/AP)  More people die from polluted water every year than from all forms of violence, including war, the U.N. said in a report Monday that highlights the need for clean drinking water.

The report, launched Monday to coincide with World Water Day, said an estimated 2 billion tons of waste water - including fertilizer run-off, sewage and industrial waste - is being discharged daily. That waste fuels the spread of disease and damages ecosystems.

"Sick Water" - the report from the U.N. Environment Program - said that 3.7 percent of all deaths are attributed to water-related diseases, translating into millions of deaths. More than half of the world's hospital beds are filled by people suffering from water-related illnesses, it said.

Read the full report

"If we are not able to manage our waste, then that means more people dying from waterborne diseases," said Achim Steiner, the U.N. Undersecretary General and executive director of UNEP.

The report says that it takes 3 liters of water to produce one liter of bottled water, and that bottled water in the U.S. requires the consumption of some 17 million barrels of oil yearly.

Improved wastewater management in Europe has resulted in significant environmental improvements there, the UNEP said, but that dead zones in oceans are still spreading worldwide. Dead zones are oxygen-deprived areas caused by pollution.

"If the world is to thrive, let alone to survive on a planet of 6 billion people heading to over 9 billion by 2050, we need to get collectively smarter and more intelligent about how we manage waste, including wastewaters," Steiner said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is tightening drinking water standards to impose stricter limits on four contaminants that can cause cancer.

In a speech Monday, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the agency is developing stricter regulations for four compounds (tetrachloroethylene, trichloroethylene, acrylamide and epichlorohydrin). All four chemical compounds can cause cancer.

EPA Information on Drinking Water

Two of the compounds (tetrachloroethyleneylene and trichloroethylene) are used in industrial and textile processing and can seep into drinking water from contaminated groundwater or surface water. Two others (acrylamide and epichlorohydrin) are impurities that can be introduced into drinking water during the water treatment process.

Jackson said the EPA will issue new rules on the four chemical compounds within the next year.

In December, an analysis of federal data showed that since 2004 violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act, which requires communities to provide safe tap water, have been found at 20 percent of U.S. water treatment systems, but only six percent of those systems were ever fined or punished by state or federal officials.

The New York Times' Charles Duhigg reported that the violations - which include dangerous bacteria or illegal concentrations of toxic or radioactive substances - affected water delivered to more than 49 million people.

[Thermoguy]

This is a very big issue that should get more attention. The Environmental Working Group did a study on polluted newborns and found a 100% toxicity ratio in newborns before they took their first breath. The toxins predisposed the unprotected fetus to cancers as well as health challenges later in life. One doctor told me of a discussion he had with a cancer doctor where they discussed children not having cancer at 10 years old, the child had cancer for 10 years and 9 months.

I lecture in medical academia where physicians and other health professionals get education credits they need for licensing. Hearing of a 100% toxicity ratio and reproductive problems as a species should be setting off alarm bells around the world. If health costs can bankrupt the US government as reported by the president, what will these toxins and health costs were not talking about do to governments of the world?

Water circulates the planet and we all share it, what are we doing to ourselves and our children's future? It isn't legal to poison people for profit but we are and there isn't a happy place for the rich or privileged to go. Scroll down to the picture of the fetus and click on the link to polluted newborns. http://www.thermoguy.com/medical.html

[calgal4]

This should have a bigger headline.

[scottyusa]

What we need to do is get "collectively smarter" at controlling our population.

[berlinfoto-2009]

Hello scottyusa, you are much closer than epoptika.
Educated people produce far fewer offspring. This is true in all of the western nations, as well. The uneducated produce far more. In the United States we as a nation, have denied equal opportunity to an entire race of peoples in order to continue oppress them, they produce more offspring which causes more oppression.
We allow and seek immigrants to fill jobs we do not want to do.
The solution we should have used years ago was education for all, it is the solution we should use today and tomorrow.
We can not even provide a decent education for our brightest, we are constantly trying to lure highly trained and educated from foreign nations.
Education is the answer to most of the nations problems, but America does not invest in its people or its education system.
The leaders seek advice from sorcerers and wizards and witches, and other purveyors of white and black magic.

[sjc_1]

That is one reason corporations go to the third world, it not just cheap labor but no protections either.

[tsigili]

Yet every government in the world, looks the other way, when corporations pollute the water ways.