Death Toll of Children from Water-Related Ailments

 

Nearly 2,000 children around the globe, under the age of five, die every day from diarrheal diseases linked to unsafe water, poor sanitation and hygiene, with 24 per cent of the deaths occurring in India alone, a UN report has warned.

Globally, an estimated 2,000 children under the age of five die every day from diarrhoeal diseases and of these some 1,800 deaths are linked to water, sanitation and hygiene, according to the report.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) child mortality data reveals that about half of under-five deaths occur in only five countries: India, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Pakistan and China.Two countries – India (24 per cent) and Nigeria (11 per cent) – together account for more than a third of all under-five years deaths. These same countries also have significant populations without improved water and sanitation.

Of the 783 million people worldwide without improved drinking water, there are 119 million in China; 97 million in India; 66 million in Nigeria; 36 million in DRC; and 15 million in Pakistan.

The figures for sanitation are even bleaker. Those without improved sanitation in these countries are: India 814 million; China 477 million; Nigeria 109 million; Pakistan 91 million; and DRC 50 million.

As the world celebrates World Water Day today, UNICEF has urged governments, civil society and ordinary citizens to remember that behind the statistics are the faces of children.

Despite a burgeoning global population, these deaths have come down significantly over the last decade, from 1.2 million per year in 2000 to about 760,000 a year in 2011. However, UNICEF said that is still too many.

“Sometimes we focus so much on the big numbers, that we fail to see the human tragedies that underlie each statistic,” said Sanjay Wijesekera, global head of UNICEF’s water, sanitation and hygiene programme.

“If 90 school buses filled with kindergartners were to crash every day, with no survivors, the world would take notice. But this is precisely what happens every single day because of poor water, sanitation and hygiene,” Wijesekera said in a statement.

“The numbers can be numbing, but they represent real lives, of real children. Every child is important. Every child has the right to health, the right to survive, the right to a future that is as good as we can make it,” said Wijesekera.

Wijesekera said the progress already made since 1990 shows that with the political will, with investment, with a focus on equity and on reaching the hardest to reach, every child should be able to get access to improved drinking water and sanitation, perhaps within a generation.

Between the Tsunami and the Rats, the Fukushima Nuke Is a Disaster Waiting to Happen

 

A rat causing a power outage by short-circuiting a temporary switchboard. Another blackout occurring as workers install anti-rat nets. Holes in the linings of huge underground tanks leaking radioactive water, APA reports quoting Associated Press. Japan‘s crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant has run into multiple problems recently that highlight its precarious state more than two years after its reactors melted down in the wake of a devastating earthquake and tsunami.A makeshift system of pipes, tanks and power cables meant to carry cooling water into the melted reactors and spent fuel pools inside shattered buildings remains highly vulnerable, Nuclear Regulation Authority chairman Shunichi Tanaka acknowledged Wednesday.In the latest development, three of the plant’s seven underground tanks are leaking. TEPCO reported the first leak early Saturday, hours after the plant’s second power outage. Within days, the damage spread to three tanks, paralyzing the plant’s storage plans for contaminated water.”Fukushima Dai-ichi is still in an extremely unstable condition, there is no mistake about that,” Tanaka said at a weekly meeting of the regulatory body’s leaders. “We cannot rule out the possibility that similar problems might occur again. Whenever a problem occurs, it halts the plant’s operations and delays the primary goal of decommissioning the plant.”

The problems have raised doubts about whether the plant can stay intact through a decommissioning process that could take 40 years, prompting officials to compile risk-reduction measures and revise decommissioning plans. The regulatory watchdog said Wednesday that it was increasing the number of inspectors from eight to nine to better oversee the plant.

Just over the past three weeks, there have been at least eight accidents or problems at the plant, the nuclear watchdog said.

The first was March 18, when a rat sneaked into an outdoor switchboard – which was sitting on a pickup truck – powering the jury-rigged cooling system and several other key parts of the plant, causing a short-circuit and blackout that lasted 30 hours in some areas of the plant. Four storage pools for fuel rods lost cooling during the outage, causing Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant’s operator, to acknowledge that it had added backup power only to the reactors, despite repeated concerns raised over a pool meltdown.

The cause of the outage wasn’t clear at the time, but TEPCO later released a photo of the electrocuted rat, which had fallen on the bottom of the switchboard outhouse. The most extensive outage since the crisis started after the March 2011 disasters caused some Fukushima residents to even consider evacuation.

Two weeks later, a new water processing machine designed to remove most radioactive elements temporarily stopped after a worker pushed a wrong button. The next day, one of the fuel storage pools lost power again for several hours when part of a wire short-circuited a switchboard while an operator installed anti-rat nets. TEPCO reported three other minor glitches on the same day, including overheating of equipment related to boron injection to the melted reactors.

Regulatory officials acknowledge that rats and snakes are abundant at the plant, and TEPCO has started to take steps to protect pipes and cables from rat gnawing. Replacement of parts and equipment to those of higher quality and long-term use is in progress.

TEPCO says none of the about 120 tons of radioactive water that leaked was believed to have reached the nearby Pacific Ocean. Experts suspect the radioactive water has been leaking since early in the crisis, citing high contamination in fish caught in waters just off the plant.

The contaminated water is by far the most serious of the recent problems because of its potential impact on water management and the environment.

The tanks are crucial to the management of contaminated water used to cool melted fuel rods at the plant’s wrecked reactors. The reactors are stable, but the melted fuel they contain must be kept cool with water, which leaks out of the reactors’ holes and ruptures and flows into basement areas.

“The contaminated water situation is on the verge of collapse,” Tanaka said. But he said there was no choice but to keep adding water, while trying to seek ways to minimize the leaks and their risks.

To address local outrage over the recent problems and TEPCO’s failure to detect problems earlier, company president Naomi Hirose traveled to Fukushima and apologized Wednesday for the problems. He promised to expedite the construction of steel containers and move all the water there from the underground tanks, at the request of Industry Minister Toshimitsu Motegi.

The underground tanks, all built by Maeda Corp., come in different sizes, including one the size of an Olympic-size swimming pool and similar to an industrial waste dump. They are dug into the ground and protected by two layers of polyethylene linings inside the outermost clay-based lining, with a felt padding in between each layer.

Regulators suspect a design problem with the underground tanks, which TEPCO allegedly chose over steel tanks as a cheaper option.

“The nuclear crisis is far from over,” the nationwide Mainichi newspaper said in a recent editorial. “There is a limit to what the patchwork operation can do on a jury-rigged system.”

Grazing in the Rain Garden

By Janice Kaspersen, Editor, Stormwater.

If there is no water in the dam, should we urinate into it? Ajit Pawar’s crass remark on drought in Maharashtra

 

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar has stirred up a hornet’s nest with his comments – laced with crass humour — ridiculing the acute water scarcity in the state .

Pawar ridiculed a farmer who has been on a fast for over 55 days, demanding the release of water from a dam for his scorched field. In an outrageous statement, Pawar said, “This person from Solapur by the name of some Deshmukh is sitting on a hunger-strike for 55 days demanding water be released from the dam. But if there is no water there what should we release? Should we urinate there? In times without water, even urine is hard to come.”

While Pawar’s supporters broke into hysterical laughter at his “joke”, the comment has been equated with the famous insult by a Russian princess who said, “If they don’t have bread, let them eat cake.” Incidentally, Pawar is the nephew of Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, who has been promising relief for farmers.

Pawar was addressing a rally in Inapur in Pune when he cracked what was his “joke” on the water crisis in Maharashtra. Perhaps realising his blunder, Pawar immediately said, “I am sure you all are thinking that I am drunk in the day itself.”The NCP has refused to offer any explanation on the issue, but this remark has not gone down too well within the party that is embarrassed to speak on it.A senior NCP leader in the state said, “It is unfortunate that he ended up saying that. It is certainly not even a matter to joke about and this comment will have severe repercussions in the coming days as it has given the opposition enough ammunition to fire at us.”

The BJP called the comment ‘crude’ and said that it reflected the arrogance with which Pawar, who has recently been re-appointed as the Deputy CM, treats the water crisis. “This is the lowest one can stoop down in politics,” a BJP leader said.

Incidentally, activists are up in arms against the state establishment for bringing the state to this point in terms of water management. Activists claim that the draught, which is the worst in Maharashtra since 1972, is a man-made problem, especially created by politicians who have bungled up the irrigation projects.

At the helm of the scam allegedly, is Pawar himself, who was forced to resign as the deputy CM last year after revelations were made by then IAC activist Anjali Damania.

 

Environmental Group Says That More Accurate Water Meters Are Essential

 

 

 

Customer meters are the cash register for a utility. If not all meters are accurate then some customers are subsidizing the consumption of other customers because our rates by necessity need to recover all costs incurred by the system.—Anastasia Valdes,  Senior Resource Analyst,  San Antonio Water System.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), in a groundbreaking partnership with utilities from across the nation, submitted a proposal to the American Water Works Association (AWWA) to revise national accuracy standards for new water meters to combat the unnecessary waste of water from low-level leaks, according to a March 2013 press release.

The AWWA is the national non-profit organization that publishes standards for mechanical water meters used to measure customer water usage.

NRDC blames much water waste on antiquated water meters.  According to the press release:

Current AWWA standards need to be improved to keep up with today’s water meter technology. The minimum flow rates at which meters are required to be tested have not changed since the first AWWA standard for cold water meters was proposed in 1921. Today, a water meter commonly installed in a new single family home is only certified to be accurate for flows down to 1/4 gallon of water per minute. A continuous flow of 1/4 gallon per minute is equivalent to 360 gallons per day. Lower flows, such as those from a dripping faucet, a running toilet, or a leaky irrigation system, may run for days, weeks or months at levels below 1/4 gallon per minute, and not be fully recorded – or recorded at all – by water meters. Consumers can lose 100 gallons a day or more from unrecorded or under-recorded leakage. This type of water waste contributes to higher bills for all consumers as utilities recover the cost of these water losses through higher and more frequent rate increases.

“Water leaks are incredibly common, often lurking unseen in our homes and businesses and wasting an enormous

Softeners Aren’t As Bad For Septic Systems as You Thought

 

The following is excerpted from a Press Release issued during the Water Quality Association’s annual convention in April, 2013. In the Gazette’s opinion, the reported research is at best another way of saying, “Water softeners aren’t as bad as you thought they are.” 

INDIANAPOLIS, April 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Water softeners set with appropriate salt efficiency do not harm septic systems and may actually help them, according to a new study released today at WQA Aquatech USA.

The Water Quality Research Foundation commissioned Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University to conduct independent and scientific testing on the issue in 2012.  The result is an official report, “Changes in Septic Tank Effluent Due to Water Softener Use.”  Nearly $100,000 was invested for this 18-month study, which included many site visits and the work of numerous trained experts from WQA, NOWRA, regulators and NSF International.

According to the authors of the study: “The data indicate that the use of efficiently operated water softeners improves septic tank performance, while the use of very inefficient home softeners may have a negative effect on solids discharge to the drain field and the level of impact will depend on the level of hardness in the water, whether the regeneration waste is discharged to the septic tank, and the amount of excess sodium present in regeneration wastes.”

Softeners are often the enabling technology that keeps the rest of our houses running effectively by preventing damaging scale build up, said Dave Haataja , executive director of WQA.  In areas with especially hard water, softeners are a necessity for anyone who doesn’t want to constantly buy new appliances and replace pipes and fixtures.  Comprehensive independent studies have also shown many other practical advantages: Saving energy and money, reducing the use of harmful detergents, and keeping our landfills a little less full.

To obtain the most accurate results possible, two different approaches were taken by those conducting the research.  One study in a controlled laboratory setting examined a range of softener/septic reactions.  Then to look at real-world conditions in everyday circumstances, case studies were conducted in the field.  The authors also looked at previous studies and tests.

WQA and NOWRA have collaborated to update the “Guidance for the Use of Water Softening and Onsite Wastewater Treatment Equipment” to include recommendations for use of water softeners with higher salt efficiencies, which this study indicates will minimize potential impacts on septic tank performance.

The Water Quality Association, a non-profit organization that seeks to uphold high standards in the water treatment industry, has committed to education programs to help disseminate sound practices for those with softeners and septics.  The association provides information through its professional training and certification programs and other venues.

The Water Quality Research Foundation (WQRF), formerly The Water Quality Research Council (WQRC), was formed in 1949 to serve as a universally recognized, independent research organization.  WQRF has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to commission credible third-party testing to offer hard data to consumers, those in the industry and policymakers.

 

 

SOURCE:  Water Quality Association

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