You have probably heard about people who have actually signed a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide. The petition states that this chemical is found in cancerous tissue, accelerates corrosion, can cause suffocation, can result in blistering burns in its gaseous form, contributes to global warming, and for those who have developed a dependency on it, complete withdrawal means almost certain death. Usually, the aim of circulating this petition is to demonstrate scientific illiteracy by drawing attention to people not recognizing that dihydrogen monoxide is just the chemical term for water. But lack of knowledge about water extends beyond just not knowing its chemical name. Most people do know about the importance of drinking adequate amounts of water, and many run around clutching bottles all day long, apparently worried that their bodies will shrivel like a prune should they fail to guzzle regularly.
At least in the western world, there is no problem in getting water to drink. All we have to do is turn on the tap to get as much running water as we want. For anyone concerned about the quality of tap water, a needless concern in my view, there is a seemingly endless supply of bottled waters. These, though, come with a host of environmental consequences. The millions of bottles cast aside every day can come back to haunt us as micro and nanoplastics that invade our food and end up in every body part that has been tested, from brain to penis. Then there is the issue of water bottling companies sucking water out of aquafers to the extent that the ground on top is literally collapsing. But the water we drink is only as tiny fraction of the water we consume.
Would you believe that every day we consume about a hundred times of our own weight of water? Obviously, we are not talking about oral consumption here. We are responsible for the consumption of massive amounts of water because virtually everything we eat, everything we wear, and every item we use requires water in its production.聽
For food, the amounts are staggering. Would you believe that it can take up to 5000 litres of water to grow a kilo of rice, or 11,000 litres to produce just one hamburger? This of course refers not only to the water cows drink, but also to the water needed to grow the feed for the cow destined to wind up as hamburger. But coffee takes the cake. It takes 20,000 litres to produce one kilogram of coffee! If you want to make that a chocolate cake, then consider that the water needed to produce the chocolate for that cake would fill 25 bathtubs. That鈥檚 the same amount of water needed to grow the cotton for one T-shirt. That鈥檚 a lot of water! But I know what you鈥檙e thinking. Sure, we use all that water, but we eventually get it back. Didn鈥檛 we learn in school about the water cycle?聽
We water plants to provide one of the building blocks they need to grow. When we or animals eat the plants, their components are eventually metabolized with one of the metabolic products being water that we secrete. So, the water we have consumed one way or another eventually ends up back in the environment. That is true enough. The overall water content of the earth is constant. But the problem is that the water does not end up from where it came.聽
Consider the situation in India. There is not enough surface water for irrigation, so farmers sink long tubes into the ground and pump water with electric pumps to the surface. The crops they grow and the milk they produce will eventually return the water, somewhere. But this water will not end up as rain to replenish the original groundwater the Indian farmer used. This is not theory, it is fact. Whereas before wells dug to ten meters yielded water, now farmers sometimes have to dig down to 400 meters. The long-term consequences are very serious with populations facing starvation due to water shortage. Efforts are underway in India to capture rainwater as efficiently as possible, but this is unlikely to solve the problem. When we talk about an endangered food supply, we usually worry about depleted soil, losses to insects, fungi, weeds and the weather. But ultimately, we may face a global food crisis for lack of water! Think about that as you wash your car, take endless showers and water your lawn without a care.
