The global water crisis is near, but what will save us is the question. The UN World Water Development Report 2015 said: “By 2030, the world is projected to face a 40% global water deficit.” The Report also states that: “The fact is there is enough water to meet the world’s growing needs, but not without dramatically changing the way water is used, managed and shared. The global water crisis is one of governance, much more than of resource availability.”
“In adult men, about 60% of their bodies are water. However, fat tissue does not have as much water as lean tissue. In adult women, fat makes up more of the body than men, so they have about 55% of their bodies made of water.”
U.S. Department of the Interior
Water is the primary component of most body parts, and it is the key for most of our organ functions. According to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. The skin contains 64% water, muscles and kidneys are 79%, and even the bones are watery: 31%. Water is an active element in various vital body functions, and we cannot survive without it.
Although water covers the high volume and a lot of space on Earth, drinkable water is insufficient, and comprehending this distribution helps understand the freshwater scarcity problem. 97% of water resources on the planet are salty seas and oceans. Only 3% of water resources are fresh, and over 68% of this freshwater can be found in glaciers and Glacier Mountains. 31.4% of it is underground, and 0.3% is on the surface. 87% of surface water resources are lakes, and 13% are rivers, according to Review of Water Resources and Desalination Technologies by J.E Miller. As a result, most of the water resources that exist are inconvenient for direct usage and fail to meet the demands for drinkable water.
Even today, in many regions of the world, especially in Africa and the Middle East, people are struggling to find decent and clean water resources. Climate change and the irresponsible usage of underground water resources lead to the daily reduction of water supplies. The indication is that the problem of maintaining freshwater supplies will become a significant one in the near future.
How did we come to this point? Is it a point of no return? There are many different elements that contributed to our water scarcity. However, the main detrimental parties to our water supplies altering the water proportions are climate change and the agriculture industry.
Climate change is affecting the global water balance from different angles. The main issue is that global warming is melting the glaciers, turning them into seawater. Even though this does not have any direct effects on our water supplies, it is eliminating an alternate supply of freshwater. In addition, global warming is raising the atmosphere’s water capacity, the water it can hold, leading to more and more substantial rainfall when the air cools. It may sound like more rainfall is actually beneficial to our fresh water supplies, but it will only cause a rapid movement of water from the atmosphere back to the oceans, making rainwater tough to store and use. Furthermore, inland glaciers mountains are also melting due to global warming. This melt will make glaciers mountains to vanish and water to go down to rivers and lakes, but in the long term, yet another freshwater resource will be, unfortunately, eliminated. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that around one billion people in dry regions may face increasing water scarcity, just due to climate change.
According to World Wildlife Fund, “the agricultural sector consumes about 70% of the planet’s accessible freshwater – more than twice that of industry (23%), and dwarfing municipal use (8%).” Unfortunately, many prominent countries are about to reach their renewable water resource limits for agriculture. The wasteful and unsustainable water use of the agriculture and animal production is undeniable, and it is due to the lack of public and political awareness and weak environmental legislation. To meet the demands of the quickly growing world population, animal production, on the other hand, contributes to global warming with the mass production of animals, use of hormones, and the amount of methane gas the animals release during the process of being fed, and nurtured. Let’s not forget the high amounts of water animals have to consume to stay alive so that they can get “ready” to become a part of a family’s meal table.
What is our alternative then? Well, we have quite a few innovative solutions that might become handier with time. For example, a way to make use of the 97% of our water resources. It’s called desalination, but desalination raises some questions regarding health if the water is consumed for a long term.
The desalination process is based on separating salts and other minerals from water, including minerals that make water fit for human consumption. This technology can be used from seawater and surface water to wastewater, industrial feed, and process waters. In order to complete the separation, reverse osmosis is conducted on the membranes of water molecules. Membrane separation, however, requires driving forces and a high use of energy to overcome natural osmotic pressures and efficiently force water through membrane processes. As such, the technology is quite energy intensive. Another problem is that we cannot drink straight up desalinated water. At the last leg of the desalination process, distilled water will go through a post-treatment to add minerals required to make it follow the World Health Organization’s Drinking-water Quality Guidelines. However, caution and maintenance are needed to avoid possible health risks at this last leg. Usually, freshwater is rich in calcium and magnesium.
For our health calcium and magnesium are both essential elements. Although drinking water is not the primary source of our calcium and magnesium intake, taking these elements by drinking water has more benefits than consuming them. According to the Health Risks from Drinking Demineralised Water by the National Institute of Public Health, Czech Republic, “the intake of soft water, i.e. water low in calcium, may be associated with higher risk of fracture in children, certain neurodegenerative diseases, pre-term birth and low weight at birth and some types of cancer. In addition to an increased risk of sudden death, the intake of water low in magnesium seems to be associated with a higher risk of motor neuronal disease, pregnancy disorders (so-called preeclampsia) and, again, some types of cancer.”
The governance of the desalination system is not internationally decided yet; thus, it is possible to encounter different levels of mineralised distilled water. In the meantime, a group of engineers from the University of Toronto are trying to find alternative methods to purify water. Professor Elodie Passeport leads the research which focuses on an alternative way of using engineered wetlands, proposing an efficient, affordable and low-maintenance design. Prof. Passeport’s research tackles with understanding the behaviour of water contaminants and testing passive water treatment system designs that optimise contaminant removal. Engineered wetlands are not yet capable of removing salts and minerals from water. However, researchers are working to improve the system and make the most of it.
So, what will save us?
Not desalination,
not engineered wetlands.
Our awareness.
Engineered wetlands and desalination process are both still works in progress. Hopefully, technology will advance, and we will defeat all the downsides of these methods and improve them.
In the meantime, we need systems that can purify any polluted fresh water and turn it into the drinkable water without breaking its mineralisation. Approximately two years ago, I was again reading about water scarcity, and possible solutions. It was during those long hours reading that I suddenly connected two things I had heard in the past. My brother had told me that the Swiss use silver ions to purify municipal water. I also recalled an anecdote by my chemistry teacher, who said that in the past, silver was used on hospital door handles as it kills bacteria.
Combining what I know from chemistry and new technologies that I had discovered, I came up with an innovative idea: a cheap water filtering technology that makes water fit for human consumption through the use of silver, active carbons and nano-filters in a portable system. I built a prototype and prepared a research paper about this innovative device, which ended up getting published.
Portable devices containing silver ions, active carbons, and nano-filters, like the aforementioned one, are an efficient way to purify dirty water resources that we are negligent to today. Besides, we have to be aware of how much water we are using, and shouldn’t waste water like we have an unlimited supply. The global water crisis is near, but our saviour is ourselves, as a combination of innovation and awareness.