Mermaid Water – Water Facts

Water & Us

Although a person can live without food for more than a month, a person can only live without water for approximately one week.

The total amount of water in the body of an average adult is about 9 gallons.

66% of the human body is water. The body’s organs contain the following amounts of water:

• Human blood is 83% water.
• Kidneys are 82% water.
• Muscles are 76% water.
• Human brains are 75% water.
• Skin and Liver are both 70% water.
• Connective tissue is 60%
• Human bones are 22% water
• Human body fat is 20% water
• Water leaves the stomach five minutes after consumption.
• The average person spends less than 1 % of his or her total personal expenditure dollars for water, wastewater, and water disposal services.

Water Usage

Americans use three to five times the amount of water that Europeans use.

The average person in the United States uses 75 to 100 gallons of water each day.

The average African family uses about 5 gallons of water each day.

More than 200 million hours are spent each day by women and female children to collect water from distant, often polluted sources.

Poor people in the developing world pay on average 12 times more per liter of water than fellow citizens connected to municipal systems; these poverty-stricken people use less water, much of which is dirty and contaminated. 

Every $1 invested in children, including money to improve access to clean water and sanitation, saved $7 in the cost of long-term public services.

2/3’s of the water used in an average home is used in the bathroom.
 
During medieval times a person used only 5 gallons per day.

It takes:

• 9 to 12 gallons of water to run an automatic dishwasher
• 2 gallons to brush your teeth
• 2 to 7 gallons to flush a toilet
• 25 to 55 gallons to take a shower. A 10-minute shower uses about 55 gallons of water.
• 1,500 gallons of water to process one barrel of beer.
• 120 gallons of water to produce one egg.
• 11.6 gallons of water to process one chicken
• 9.3 gallons of water to process one can of fruit or vegetables.
• 6,800 gallons of water is required to grow a day's food for a family of four.
• 1,850 gallons of water to refine one barrel of crude oil.
• 1 gallon of water to process a quarter pound of hamburger.
• 2,072 gallons of water to make four new tires.
• 39,000 gallons of water to produce the average domestic auto, including tires.

A leaking faucet can waste up to 100 gallons of water a day.

The average person spends less than 1 % of his or her total personal expenditure dollars for water, waste water, and water disposal services.

The United States withdraws 339 billion gallons of ground and surface water a day.

Water & Our Earth

March 22nd has been celebrated as 'World Water Day' since 1993.

We spend $366 billion a year - equal to 1% of the world's GDP - on water purification and consumption.

The demand for water from 1900 to 1995 increased sixfold - more than twice the rate of population growth during the same time interval.

The UN estimates that in less than 25 years, if present water consumption trends continue, 5 billion people will be living in areas where it will be impossible or difficult to meet basic water needs for sanitation, cooking and drinking.

There is the same amount of water on Earth today as there was 3 billion years ago.

Of all water on earth, 97.5% is salt water, and of the remaining 2.5% fresh water, some 70% is frozen in the polar icecaps. The other 30% is mostly present as soil moisture or lies in underground aquifers. In the end, less than 1% of the world's fresh water (or about 0.007% of all water on earth) is readily accessible for direct human uses. It is found in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and in underground sources shallow enough to be tapped at affordable cost.

75 % of the earth is covered with water.

80% of the earth's water is surface water. The other 20% is either ground water or atmospheric water vapor.

World water usage is divided 70% Agricultural, 22% Industrial and 8% Domestic.

According to the United Nations Environmental Programme’s report; Global Environment Outlook 3 (2002) by the mid-1990s, 80 countries home to 40% of world population encountered serious water shortages. Worst affected are Africa and the Middle East. By 2025 two-thirds of the world’s people will be facing water stress. The global demand for water will have grown by over 40% by then.
75% of a living tree is water. A single tree will give off 265 liters (70 gallons) of water per day in evaporation.

Each day the sun evaporates a trillion tons of water.

An acre of corn will give off 15,000 liters (4,000 gallons) of water per day in evaporation. An acre of corn contributes more to humidity than a lake of the same size.

Sources of water pollution include: oil spills, fertilizer and agricultural run-off, sewage, storm water, and industrial wastes.

Freshwater animals are disappearing five times faster than land animals.

Water moves around the earth in a water cycle. The water cycle has five parts: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, infiltration and surface run-off.

In a 100-year period, a water molecule spends 98 years in the ocean, 20 months as ice, about 2 weeks in lakes and rivers, and less than a week in the atmosphere.

Water is the only substance that is found naturally on earth in three forms: liquid, gas, solid.

Frozen water is 9% lighter than water, which is why ice floats on water.

Scientists believe that the structure of liquid water consists of aggregates of water molecules that form and re-form continually.

Water & Health

Hippocrates, known as the father of medicine, directed people in Greece to boil and strain water before drinking it.

In the 1950’s scientists began to suspect that water might carry diseases. Although earlier treatment of water could make the water safer, it was mainly done to improve the taste, smell or looks of the water.

In 1908, Jersey City, New Jersey and Chicago, Illinois were the first water supplies to be chlorinated in the United States.

The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) of 1974 represents the first time that public drinking water supplies were protected on a federal (national) level in the United States. Amendments were made to the SDWA in 1986 and 1996. The Amendment to the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1986 increased the number of contaminants to be regulated from 26 to 83 and expanded EPA's enforcement authority. If a drinking water supplier violates any federal standard, the utility by law must tell the customer.

One gallon of gasoline can contaminate approximately 750,000 gallons of water. You can help prevent pollution of drinking water sources by carefully disposing of the chemical products you use in your home.

Water can cause serious health damage when it is contaminated by bacteria and other micro-organisms. In most cities and towns, municipal drinking water is treated so that people don't get sick with diseases such as cholera and typhoid, which are caused by bacteria, viruses or parasites found naturally in the water. Well water generally is not treated for such contamination as municipal water is.

About 450 cubic kilometers of wastewater are carried into coastal areas by rivers and streams every year. These pollution loads require an additional 6,000 cubic kilometers of freshwater to dilute the pollution. This amount equals to two-thirds of the world's total stable run-off.

It is not safe for hikers and backpackers to drink water directly from remote streams.

According to the World Health Organization 1.1 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water and 2.4 billion do not have access to proper sanitation provisions.

Each day almost 10,000 children under the age of 5 in Third World countries die as a result of illnesses contracted by use of impure water.

There are over 10 million different synthetic chemicals in use today that can contribute to water contamination. We now know more than 70.000 water pollutants overall.

Water regulates the temperature of the human body. If you have caught a fever you should drink lots of water.

Water removes waste from the human body.

Water & Measurement

One gallon of water is equal to 3.785 liters of water.

One cubic foot of water is equal to 7.48 gallons of water.

A liter of water weighs 1.01 kilograms.

Water boils at 212^o Fahrenheit or 100^o Celsius. Water freezes at 32^o Fahrenheit or 0^o Celsius.

Chemically, water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, its molecule consists of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen - H2O.

Water's composition by weight is one part of hydrogen to eight of oxygen (or 11.1 percent of hydrogen and about 88.9 percent of oxygen).

The physical and chemical properties of water are extraordinarily complicated and not completely understood.