Drinking Water

The Water Quality and Health Council has been sending out warnings about a serious and potentially deadly problem facing the US population posed by our aging piped water infrastructure (see our “Pain at the Pipe” Part 1 and Part 2 blog posts).  We are not alone in issuing this warning.  In May, the American Water... Read More »

Ground water is vulnerable to contamination from activities occurring on and below the earth’s surface. Image courtesy of US EPA website. A new study of small drinking water systems in Wisconsin shows residents of some communities in the state are exposed to viruses, including norovirus, through tap water. Researchers found human viruses in about 24... Read More »

A significant global public health milestone has been reached: In the two decades between 1990 and 2010, over two billion people worldwide gained access to clean drinking water sources,i according to the United Nations (press release). This raises to 6.1 billion the number of people on Earth with access to clean drinking water, a full 89 percent of the world’s population.... Read More »

Drink water: It’s a common refrain, but do you know why those two little words combine to produce such good advice? According to The Health Benefits of Water, after oxygen, water is the human body’s most important need. It’s simple and healthful, so make it a habit: drink water! Water serves many critical purposes in the... Read More »

The Artibonite department is one of the most important regions of Haiti. For centuries, its thousands of acres of luxuriant vegetation carried the weight of the nation’s national production of rice, which once totaled 210,000 metric tons annually. As the most important and appreciated element of the country’s diet, the rice market single handedly supported... Read More »

People repair and replace many things throughout their lives including shoes, clothing, automobile tires, household appliances and the like and sometimes even hips, knees, lungs, and kidneys. Generally, the longer the useful life, the greater the reliability, and the more something is out of sight, the less prepared people become when major renovation or replacement... Read More »

There is a complex, buried system of more than a million miles of pipe under our feet.  Through these pipes, clean drinking water flows to points of use, servicing millions of homes, businesses and institutions.  Unfortunately, this hidden but essential asset has reached its sunset years in many cities and towns.  In some places, such... Read More »

It’s easy to appreciate the need to disinfect germs on surfaces, but have you ever wondered how germs exist on surfaces in the first place? Enter the biofilm. In recent years, scientists have increased their understanding of these dense colonies of bacteria that produce an extracellular material that binds a community of different microorganisms together... Read More »