Thirst Day

Water occupies more than 70% of the surface of our planet and it also makes up about 60% of the human body weight According to the most popular theories about the origin of life, it originated in water It is difficult to underestimate the importance of this resource for humans Fresh water makes up only 25% of the total water on Earth Only 03% of them can be called easily accessible to humans The rest of the water is either in the bowels of the earth or frozen Africa is the continent where the problem of fresh water shortage is most acute According to UNICEF statistics, at least 500 children under the age of 5 die here every day from unsanitary conditions and lack of clean water According to the same organization, almost half of the world's population without access to drinking water lives in sub-Saharan Africa According to other data, more than 40% of the world's population suffers from a lack of fresh water, and the situation is getting worse every year Since about the middle of the last century, the problem of fresh water shortage has become global To attract special public attention to it, activists began to hold Thirst Day on August 24 every year Water is an essential component of all living things Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it dissolves both organic and inorganic substances quite well At the same time, water ensures a high rate of chemical reactions Although science has long made great leaps forward, scientists still have not fully studied the nature of this simple substance The heat capacity of water is abnormally high, that is, in order to heat a small amount of a substance, it is necessary to expend much more energy than when heating other liquids of the same volumes It retains heat for a long time, which determines our ability to maintain the same temperature in both heat and cold With the help of water, the human body regulates its own temperature Water acts as a universal solvent for nutrients If it were not in the body, then the process of nutrition itself would lose all meaning The human circulatory system, and indeed any other living creature, is a transport complex that delivers nutrients to cells and removes their waste products Blood is approximately 60% plasma, which in turn is a cocktail of water, proteins and clotting substances Not a single organ, not a single muscle, not a single cell of the body can fully function without water A deficiency of this resource leads to death from dehydration A person can live without food for about 8-10 days, but without water under unfavorable environmental conditions no more than three days If the lack of clean drinking water is already recognized as a global problem, then many people have a completely logical question: “Where does it go?” In fact, the water does not disappear, it becomes polluted and becomes undrinkable The anthropogenic factor plays a huge role in this process of depletion of fresh water reserves In coastal areas where groundwater is actively pumped out, fresh water becomes saline Waste emissions from various industrial enterprises poison the water, as do fertilizers washed away from the fields by rain Human activity leads to the pollution of fresh water bodies, but in some countries the problem is associated with over-urbanization, when cities simply do not have enough infrastructure to collect fresh water from rivers Today, researchers and scientists offer a lot of different solutions to the problem of fresh water shortage - modern technologies for the purification and processing of waste and household water, the use of breeding techniques for growing crops on saline soils, the creation of reservoirs, planting forests along the banks of reservoirs that accumulate moisture and fed by underground springs Desalination of salt water was also previously included in the list of these options, but the method turned out to be economically unprofitable and even dangerous The sodium chloride crystals formed during the process do not dissolve when released back into the sea, but settle on the bottom and form a salt shell that destroys all living things