Why Water Affects the Flow of Our Lives

Water is the driver of Nature — Leonardo Da Vinci

The Environment Protection Agency (EPA) of Ireland announced in October of this year that 23 areas of Ireland were found to have water supplies contaminated by lead. The areas included Galway, Limerick, Donegal and Kerry among others. This caused quite a bit of panic of course, because we can’t live without our daily intake of fresh water. These cases were not the first this year and most probably won’t be the last either. When these kinds of stories hit the news there is usually widespread panic. Everybody is wondering if their county or town is next on the dirty water hit list. Water contamination stories have been making the Irish news more frequently in recent times.

Galway has been the most affected area with several cases of lead poisoning in the water there. Traces of lead were found in the Old Mervue area of the city where 1000 households were affected. Also, houses in the Bohermore, Shantalla and Claddagh areas were also found to have traces of lead in their water supply.

Last year, in Cavan and Monaghan, traces of Phenol (a highly toxic, caustic chemical) were discovered in the water supply to many households there. The Phenol traces were caused by a copper mining chemical being used as a replacement for a water treatment chemical. Enva, a Cork based environmental solutions company were the culprits in this case. They at least did fully complied with the ensuing investigation into the chemical scandal.

Thankfully it was the only time that this dangerous chemical has ever been found in water supplies in Ireland. Lead is a different story altogether however.
The reason for lead contamination is because lead pipes are still used to distribute water in many areas of Ireland.

The Department of the Environment is funding the replacement of these lead pipes over the next few years. This action really should have been taken a long time ago as too much lead in water can be fatal. Under existing legislation, drinking water that contains more than 25 micrograms of lead per litre is regarded as not safe to drink. The sooner all these pipes are replaced the better for everybody.

As with lots of other scandals or catastrophes in the world, countries tend to only take action when something bad actually happens and do not take preventive measures beforehand. Ireland is seeking help from other countries to assist with the water problems that we have. Experts on chemistry and engineering from Britain and other countries have been hired to help us deal with these issues.

Although the lead trend is slightly worrying, the EPA was very keen to stress that out of the 994 water supplies in Ireland, 99 per cent of them comply with our legal standards of lead contamination. The main problem we have is the distribution of our water and not the water itself.

Dr. Mary Kelly, Director General of the EPA has highlighted this problem recently: “Ireland has an abundant supply of fresh water, although not evenly distributed across the country”, she says. “Water is also crucial as a habitat for freshwater and marine plants and animals and as an amenity for all of us to enjoy”.

Another worrying pattern however, is the level of bacterial contamination found in our rivers. More and more of Ireland’s fish are being killed every year because of this. These bacterial hazards are usually caused by neglectful companies and uncaring farmers who dump their waste products in the nearest river that they can find. Ireland is one of the worst countries in Europe for this type of contamination.

Recent studies by the EPA have shown that only 71 per cent of Ireland’s river length has satisfactory water quality. Added to this is the embarrassing statistic that 22 per cent of Irish coastal water bodies have unacceptable bacterial levels in them. More stringent protection is needed in this country if the water standard is not to slip any further down the contamination spiral.

Environmental laws still allow for some water contamination and perhaps these laws now need to be changed. Stricter guidelines need to be enforced if we are to have an unpolluted water supply. We are not the only country in Europe to have let our water standards slip however.

The general standard of water in the EU has dropped in recent years, and Ireland is only one of many countries that has let its clean water barometer drop. Italy and Spain were found to be banning swimming at coastal and inland bathing areas that were due to be tested by the European Commission (EC). This helped in giving a false impression of water purity in both countries.

Certain areas of Italy and Spain were even removed from the list of sites to be tested altogether, again to assist in obtaining better clean water statistics. This kind of behavior is not permitted by the EC who are having to crackdown on this kind of behaviour. Portugal, Germany, France and Finland were also guilty of removing more than one per cent of their beaches from the sample list of testing sites.

Britain fare a bit better in the EC tests. Only 13 of their 562 individual seaside resorts that were tested still fail to reach the minimum standards required.
The need for fresh, clean water in any society is all too obvious. We depend on unsullied water to sustain us in our lifetime. Plants and animals are no different in this area too. If clean running water is not readily available to every living thing on this planet, the consequences can be extremely bad, if not completely devastating. Water is our life blood and the less it is tampered with, the healthier we will be.

Let’s face the facts though. Even with the lead and phenol cases, Ireland is blessed, for the most part, with an abundance of fresh and uncontaminated water. We do have some inconsistencies in our water, but nothing when compared to countless countries across the globe, where water is treated as much more of a precious commodity.

We tend to take for granted that fresh water is ready on tap in this country. We can drink it straight from our taps; we shower and bathe in it; boil our potatoes and vegetables in it; hose our cars with it; we use it to flush our toilets. Relative to the rest of the world we are extremely lucky in this regard.

When water does become contaminated it leads inevitably to disease and death. More than five million people die from water-related diseases in the world every year, a frightening statistic. Another scary fact is that 84 per cent of these deaths are children who are under the age of 15 years old. It is true that humans can last weeks without food but they can only survive for a few days without water.

Worldwide, approximately 1.1 billion people do not have access to clean water every day and roughly every 15 seconds a child dies of a preventable waterborne disease. This, for the most part, happens in the developing nations of the world, countries that lack the infrastructure and of course the money that the more industrialized nations have. Most of Africa has this problem. Around 300 million Africans do not have access to clean water. This is mostly caused by severe drought in particular areas. Another major factor though is a lack of utilization when it comes to the supplying of water.

Africa actually has an abundant water supply but it is not distributed very well. With 17 massive rivers and roughly 160 major lakes, there is in fact enough water to go around the whole continent. However, Africa only uses about 4 per cent of these water resources for use domestically, and in agriculture and industry.

Asia is the next worse-off continent when it comes to having access to clean water. Around 80 per cent of India’s population still lives in unsanitary conditions. This is mainly due to a lack of running water in toilets there. People are forced to relieve themselves outdoors where disease becomes rampant. It is easy to take flushing water for granted in developed nations, but for much of the world this is a luxury.

Many Asian countries also have a problem with high levels of arsenic in their water supplies. Many Asian nations have no method for testing the quality of water and arsenic traces inevitably cause many deaths. Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam are the worst affected. Rice fields in these areas are often irrigated with contaminated water leading to inevitable sickness and death.
With so much of the world having little or no access to clean running water, we have to be very thankful for living in Ireland.

Although we have our own problems with the water supply here, we don’t have them on anywhere near the same scale as much of the world. Many of us living on this giant bauble we call planet earth don’t have the luxury of just turning on taps to get water. Those that do should count themselves very fortunate. It would be great to think that at some stage in the future everybody in this world will be able to have access to clean water. Until then the reality is that many more people will die from the lack of it.