Let's Stop Water Pollution
By: Fantasia Thurston
The Problem
The problem is that people don't have access to safe water and don't have access to sanitation. This problem affects women, infants, schoolchildren, adolescent girls, people with disabilities, and the elderly. Unsafe water and poor sanitation cause diarrheal diseases, which kill over 500,000 people each year. Lack of clean water and toilets costs sub-saharan Africa 5% of its GDP every year. Because of the lack of clean water, people are getting life threatening water-related diseases.
The collecting of water generally falls on women, often taking several trips a day and many hours of their time.
It often prevents women from doing vital domestic or incomes generating work.
About 1,400 children die every day from diseases caused by dirty water.
Around 500,000 children die every year from diarrhea caused by unsafe water. Many children are frequently absent from school because they are collecting water or are sick.
Solutions
A solution to this problem is to moves the wastes. Water pollution is caused by humans depositing wastes in water, so by putting wastes into wastes far away from the water instead of into the water we would easily fix the problem. Another solution is called rain gardens. Rain gardens use porous plants and organic soil to collect water with their roots, preventing contaminated water from running off into waterways.
Blue Ocean
The Blue Ocean is a nonprofit organization. Its goal is to bring clean water to areas less fortunate to the United States.