Chapter 1 History Clean Water Environmentalism is a big word But its meaning is simple Practicing environmentalism means being a friend of Earth and all its creatures Environmentalists want to keep our air healthy our land clean and our water fresh They want to take care of our plants and animals by making sure our planet remains a safe place to live Some environmentalists focus on encouraging people to stop polluting Others encourage people to recycle One of the most important environmental jobs is to get everyone access to clean water The Story of Clean Water Ninety-eight percent of Earth’s water is salt water We can’t drink salt water Animals can’t drink salt water We can’t water
The ocean covers about 71 percent of Earth plants with salt water This is why civilizations have always been built around fresh water sources such as lakes and rivers All living things animals plants and people need fresh water to survive Without fresh water we couldn’t fight off diseases go to the bathroom or digest our food Fresh water is our most important natural resource It is a renewable resource because of rain This means there is an unlimited amount But we don’t take care of it the way we should Beginning in the 18th century we started using machines and factories to make things These factories dumped waste directly
Polluted water can cause fish to die
into our waterways Our bodily waste was dumped into the water too runoff from construction sites also polluted water All of this made some of our fresh water undrinkable People would get sick when they drank it But for a long time we didn’t know this Finally in 1855 Dr John Snow made an important discovery about our water supply Cholera Snow was a medical doctor in England who believed that people were dying from the disease known as cholera because they were drinking unclean water Cholera causes throwing up and diarrhea People can die within hours of contracting it At the time people didn’t have running water or even toilets They used all the same water from pumps for drinking cooking and washing Some of the water came from the Thames River where people dumped waste and garbage In 1854 a big breakout of cholera happened in Soho a suburb in London The disease killed 616 people All the people who died had been drinking from the same pump The pump came from a well that was right next to an area where people dumped their waste Unfortunately this was leaking into the well After this pump was closed down nobody else became sick and died Scientists then
