Water and You: More Water Facts

Considering water is the second most important factor for human life after oxygen, there is certainly a lot to know about it. The facts about water are amazing and have all kinds of things to do with every aspect of life. These facts can be separated into categories, including general facts, water quantities, water and health, water use, and water pollution.

General Facts

  1. There is more water than there is above-water-level ground on Earth.
  2. There is the same amount of water on the planet now than there was when the planet was first formed.
  3. In a 100 year period of time, a molecule of water spends 98 years in the ocean, 20 months as ice, two weeks in lakes and rivers, and less than a week in the atmosphere.
  4. Groundwater can take a human lifetime to travel the distance of one mile.
  5. Water regulates Earth�s temperature.
  6. Water is the only substance that occurs naturally as a gas, solid, and liquid on Earth.
  7. Ice is 9% lighter than liquid water, thus ice cubes float in a glass of water.
  8. Calcium and magnesium are the two contaminants that make water �hard water.�

Water Quantities

  1. 97% of the world�s water is ocean water, 2% of which is frozen.
  2. 80% of the world�s water is surface water with the rest being ground water.
  3. 2.5% of the water on earth is freshwater.
  4. Over 90% of the drinkable water on the planet is frozen in Antarctica.
  5. A chicken is 75% water.
  6. A tomato is 95% water.
  7. Every day, the sun evaporates a trillion tons of water from the planet.
  8. A tree will give off seventy gallons of water a day to evaporation.
  9. A small drip from a faucet or pipe corner can cause a waste of 75 liters of water a day.

Water and Health

  1. A human being can only live about a week without water.
  2. A person drinks an average of about 75,000 liters of water in his or her entire life.
  3. More than two billion people in the world do not have safe drinking water.
  4. Water is what regulates body temperature in people, just as it does with the planet.
  5. Drinking directly from a lake or river that looks clean can still make a person sick.
  6. Water leaves the human stomach five minutes after consumption.
  7. Two major diseases responsible for deaths in the past, Cholera and Typhoid, are spread through contaminated water.

Water Use

  1. Americans use five times the water of people who live in Europe.
  2. Human beings use about 50 gallons of water a day per person.
  3. Water use costs about 25 cents a day in the United States.
  4. Two thirds of the water used at home by people is used in the bathroom.
  5. A five minute shower uses up to 50 gallons of water.
  6. Brushing your teeth uses about two gallons of water each time you do it.
  7. Using a dishwasher can use up to 12 gallons of water each time it is used.
  8. It takes 1,500 gallons of water to produce a barrel of beer.
  9. It takes 120 gallons of water to produce one egg.
  10. It can take about 9.3 gallons of water to make one can of fruit or vegetables.
  11. Bottled water can be 1,000 times more expensive than tap water.
  12. Baths use less water than a typical shower.

Water Pollution

  1. There are more than 70,000 known water pollutants in the world today.
  2. One gallon of gasoline can contaminate 750,000 gallons of freshwater.
  3. 4% of usable ground water is already contaminated and unusable.
  4. Today, drinking water must meet over 100 standards before it is considered potable.
  5. The principle sources of contamination today are associated with chemical contamination from World War II.
  6. Most of the world�s people have to walk an average of three hours to get to clean drinking water.
  7. Freshwater animals are disappearing five times faster than any kind of land animals.