Water Facts

water facts

Water is a precious resource: Here are 50 Amazing Water Facts

Updated 27 October 2020

Less than 1% of the water supply on earth can be used as drinking water.
About 6,800 gallons (25,700 liters) of water is required to grow a day's food for a family of four.
An acre of corn will give off 4,000 gallons (15,000 liters) of water per day in evaporation.
A person can live about a month without food, but only about a week without water. If a human does not absorb enough water dehydration is the result.
Most of the earth's surface water is permanently frozen or salty.
2.5% of the earth's fresh water is unavailable: locked up in glaciers, polar ice caps, atmosphere, and soil; highly polluted; or lies too far under the earth's surface to be extracted at an affordable cost.
An estimated 790 million people (11% of the world's population) live without access to an improved water supply.
A small drip from a faucet can waste as much as 34 gallons or 128 liters of water a day.
On average, women in developing countries walk 3.7 miles (6 kilometers) a day to collect water. In Africa alone, women spend 40 billion hours a year walking for water.
Every day, six billion gallons of treated water is lost due to leaking pipes in the U.S.
There are still an estimated 240,000 water main breaks per year in the United States, wasting over two trillion gallons of treated drinking water.
Drinking water is delivered via one million miles of pipes across the United States.
In the U.S., an estimated $1.38 trillion in investment is needed to keep up with demand of water in the next 25 years.
Though more than 60,000 chemicals are used in the United States currently, only 91 contaminants are currently being regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act. No chemicals have been added to that list since 2000.
Human bones are 31% water.
Around 700 million people in 43 countries suffer today from water scarcity. By 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world's population could be living under water stressed conditions.
Bottled water can be up to 2000 times more expensive than tap water and it may not be as safe.
A point-of-use drinking water filtration system, such as Reverse Osmosis, costs only pennies per gallon of purified water, allows people to refill water bottles, and keeps more water bottles out of landfills.
“Legally Safe” and “Totally Safe” mean two completely different things to the EPA. The CWA (Clean Water Act) regulates 9 contaminants. If tap water contains less than the maximum acceptable levels of those contaminants you water is legally safe. Yet the EPA is investigating 10,000 others that are not regulated, known to be in tap water, with safety unknown. Hence, the reason you should ‘treat’ “Legally Safe” water.
More than half of the water used in a home is used in the bathroom.
Ultraviolet light can destroy 99.99% of harmful microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, cysts) in water to make water safe to drink. It is a safe, chemical-free water to improve household water.
Less than 1% of the water treated by public water suppliers is used for drinking and cooking.
Public supply represents about 14 percent of total freshwater withdrawals.
As oceans are very wide and there are multiple to be found on earth, oceans store most of the earth's water.
90% of all Americans receive their drinking water from a public water supply.
Thirst ensures that creatures maintain a balance of hydration and nutrients, such as sodium, that are vital to the healthy functioning of cells.
Each day, enough rain falls on the United States to cover the entire state of Vermont with 2 feet of water
Up to 60% of the human adult body is water.
How much water should you drink a day? Health authorities commonly recommend eight 8-ounce glasses, which equals about 2 liters, or half a gallon. This is called the 8×8 rule and is very easy to remember.
We lose over 2 quarts (64 oz) of water every day through the normal vapor exchange of our skin, otherwise known as perspiration.
It is a little known fact, but insufficient water consumption is actually a risk factor for various types of cancer. Hydration is critical to blood circulation to allow immune system cells to reach damaged tissues in greater numbers.
In 1998 the National Resources Defense Council completed a 4-year test of 103 bottles water, and found that 1/3 of them contained bacteria and other chemicals at levels exceeding industry standards.
Pure water (solely hydrogen and oxygen atoms) has a neutral pH of 7, which is neither acidic nor basic.
A single gallon of gasoline can contaminate 750,000 gallons of water.
Ground water contamination is nearly always the result of human activity.
A whole-house ultraviolet water disinfection system can ensure household water is safe from harmful bacteria and harmful water-borne viruses.
There are 12,000 different toxic chemical compounds in industrial use today, and more than 500 new chemicals are developed each year.
Reverse Osmosis drinking water systems can remove fluoride, arsenic, lead, chlorine, pesticides, nitrates and more from water.
Water dissolves more substances than any other liquid. Wherever it travels, water carries chemicals, minerals, and nutrients with it.
Freshwater animals are vanishing faster than those on land or at sea.
Water continually evaporates, condenses, and precipitates, and on a global basis, evaporation approximately equals precipitation.
According to the EPA, lead exposure is linked to physical development delays and behavioral problems. You can remove 98% of lead in water with a reverse osmosis drinking water system.
The weight a person loses directly after intense physical activity is weight from water, not fat.
At birth, water accounts for approximately 80 percent of an infant’s body weight
To produce one chicken, we need 330 gallons of water.
Aquifers in industrialized areas are at significant risk of being contaminated by chemicals and petroleum products.
There are 800,000 miles of public sewage pipes in the U.S.
To manufacture new cars, between 13,737 to 21,926 gallons of water are used per car.
According to the EPA, a full bathtub requires about 70 gallons of water, while taking a five-minute shower uses 10 to 25 gallons.
The aging infrastructure in U.S. causes a water main break every two minutes.