11–20 of 94 posts
I was raised to both filter and boil tap water before drinking. I don’t understand why these aspects are not mentioned when discussing safe drinking water.
What are the country/world leaders doing to solve this?
The "solution" from the perspective of the leading countries: https://themuslimvibe.com/muslim-current-affairs-news/heres-...
We also need to think about uses of water. Water is used for drinking (~2 liters/day)... Contamination here really matters. Waker is used for cooking (~20 liters per day). Contamination here matters somewhat, since some forms of pollutants will be rendered harmless by cooking. Water is used for washing (~200 liters per day). Contamination here matters a little too, because washing water can touch something which gets…
I noticed that in some countries tap water isn't safe for drinking but good enough for cooking; and everyone buys large plastic 40lb jugs of water for drinking. How much more cost effective would it be to adopt such a system as opposed to safe drinkable tap water?
Countries with unreliable power grids usually don't have drinkable tap water for that reason.
It can also be because the water isn't treated (ie. it is just rainwater in the pipes). Water treatment actually isn't very expensive though - collecting the water and distributing the water are by far the biggest costs.
I didn’t find this in the article, and am still confused. Do they boil their water? Doesn’t it help with disease? There was one example of the family spending time collecting firewood equal to time collecting water, but boiling was still missing. Also, what about filtering? You can do it with charcoal. I was raised to both filter and boil tap water before drinking. I don’t understand why these aspects are not mention…
Maybe. We need to specify what makes exactly makes some water sample unsafe before we can discuss anything. Sometimes boiling helps, sometimes it makes it worse. If your concern nitrates, lead, arsenic, or other things that won't boil, then boiling just concentrates the contaminates and makes the water worse! If your concern is bacteria boiling will kill the bacteria, but the dead cells are still there which may include some poison in the bacteria.
Most filters will not remove the above either. Water is very good at dissolving a lot of nasty things that you don't want in your body (that ability enables a lot of controlled chemistry and thus life as we know it!), and once dissolved it will go through a filter. We again need to know exactly what is in the water before we can discuss if a filter works or not, otherwise we should just assume the filter is not going to make water safe.
Of course we should work toward a world where everyone has clean, highly available water inside the home, but by conflating "unsafe" with "outside the home", the article gives the impression of trying to gin up support by exaggerating the safety problem. On some level, I get it. "2B People Don't Have Safe Running Water Inside Their Homes," is considerably less punchy, even if more accurate.
The solution is to tell them why clean water matters, and provide them a cheap way of making dirty water pretty clean. Ie. a water filter.
The cheapest water filters, costing perhaps $10 and able to filter a family drinking water supply for years, will still eliminate most concerning contamination in water.
The best water filters - pumped reverse osmosis systems - are still only a few hundred dollars, and will also give a family drinking water for many years.
In thailand for example, vending machines exist which cost a few cents to use and will dispense a few liters of filtered water. These help spread the cost of the expensive filter between people and across time.
I'm disappointed that the article conflates together "safe" and "convenient". Out of the 2B who "don't have safe drinking water", About 1.75B have an "improved source", which is a source that "is not free from contamination, [or] is not on the premises, or [is not] always available." Of course we should work toward a world where everyone has clean, highly available water inside the home, but by conflating "unsafe" wi…
Convenience is a safety feature. The safe option has to also be the convenient option, or people will actively seek out unsafe but convenient options.
I didn’t find this in the article, and am still confused. Do they boil their water? Doesn’t it help with disease? There was one example of the family spending time collecting firewood equal to time collecting water, but boiling was still missing. Also, what about filtering? You can do it with charcoal. I was raised to both filter and boil tap water before drinking. I don’t understand why these aspects are not mention…
> Do they boil their water? Doesn’t it help with disease? Maybe. We need to specify what makes exactly makes some water sample unsafe before we can discuss anything. Sometimes boiling helps, sometimes it makes it worse. If your concern nitrates, lead, arsenic, or other things that won't boil, then boiling just concentrates the contaminates and makes the water worse! If your concern is bacteria boiling will kill the b…
We also need to think about uses of water. Water is used for drinking (~2 liters/day)... Contamination here really matters. Waker is used for cooking (~20 liters per day). Contamination here matters somewhat, since some forms of pollutants will be rendered harmless by cooking. Water is used for washing (~200 liters per day). Contamination here matters a little too, because washing water can touch something which gets…
I noticed that in some countries tap water isn't safe for drinking but good enough for cooking; and everyone buys large plastic 40lb jugs of water for drinking. How much more cost effective would it be to adopt such a system as opposed to safe drinkable tap water?
Using safe potable water to flush toilets is silly. Splitting drinking from other uses is far more efficient.
This a truly big problem that has been going surfaced for decades, and I honestly have become split... On one side, France in particular, but many other "developed" nations as well have stepped in to build the infrastructure and provide clean water to places where it was problematic. Only to monopolize water distribution one way or the other, resulting in people not able to afford the water at the end, while losing t…
They need to dance no matter what, let's be real. Be that for the Chinese government, be that for whichever government, be it hearing out some religious org proselytizing at them, be it enduring stupid and infantilizing designs like those water wells that were powered by a children's spinning playground thing, it really isn't that shocking that these places don't have water still. You basically need to put up with some combination of public relations people who look down on you, celebrities who look down on you, politicians who look down on you, religious folk who look down on you, and all to get a damn well with a filter on it.
> Do we have things that really improved at scale in the last ten or twenty years ?
There's nothing really to improve. This could be solved in a matter of weeks, if we wanted. But as with most things like this, the solution isn't sexy, it isn't interesting, and unless you monetize it as you describe, it isn't profitable. This isn't a problem silicon valley can solve with an app that's name is a regular word with vowels removed from it, so they don't give a shit. Nestle can't change people for it, so they aren't stepping up. Every charity comes with some or another condescending string attached, even if it's nothing more nefarious than they're going to take selfies or video or whatever with them helping the needy, that's not nothing and it's still denigrating.
Wells and filters are not a site of innovation, not really. We know how to build them, but the under-serviced people remain because servicing them won't make money, so nobody cares.