Safe Drinking Water in Indonesia

Devon GerstenfieldGrade 4

Seoul, Korea

What is Water?

• Water is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom

• Water covers 71 % of the earth and our bodies are made up of 65% of water.

• Almost all living things need water to survive

What is Drinking Water?

• The WHO (World Health Organization) defines Drinking Water as: water used for drinking, cooking and personal hygiene (bathing)

• Access to drinking water should be less than 1km from its place of use

What is the Problem

• I live in Asia, and I wanted to find out how we can help people from dying from a lack of water. I read an article on the internet about a boy my age who lives in Indonesia. He had to wake up at 5am every morning to boil water for drinking. His parents cannot afford bottled water. People earn on average $42,000 a year in the United States, but in Indonesia, the average income is just $3000 a year.

Problem, cont.

• Water can cost $1 a bottle in Indonesia, which doesn’t seem like very much to us, but to them it is a lot. Indonesia is a poor country. This boy had no option.

Percentage of Population Without Reasonable Access to Safe Drinking Water

• 18-32% (more than 100 million) of Indonesia’s population has no access to clean water

How is water polluted

• Waste (chemicals or sewage) gets dumped into rivers and lakes by accident or by companies. If sewage is dumped into a larger body of water it kills the animals and plants.

• Industrial plants use water to cool their machines. They then dump this water back into the ecosystem. The hot water that is dumped makes too many nutrients in the water and so almost everything dies. Anything that survives will reproduce faster than normal and this will throw the ecosystem out of balance.

• Another source of pollution could be dead animals floating in the water.

What happens?

• Pollution in a water supply causes sickness in the people and animals that drink it. In Indonesia, E-coli, cholera or typhoid fever are diseases that can be spread by drinking dirty water. These diseases can cause diarrhea which is the number two cause of death for children under 5 in Indonesia.

Indonesia’s Solution

• A United States government agency introduced a chemical solution. It is called Air Rahmat. In the Indonesian language, Air Rahmat means “gift water.” It is a liquid 1.25 % sodium hypochlorite solution. They just add the right amount and shake the water bottle and wait 30 minutes and then the water is ready.

• Sodium hypochlorite is basically bleach. It kills most germs.

Conclusion

• Some big problems can have simple solutions. Anywhere else in the world that has this problem could use the same chemical (Air Rahmat) to make clean water. Then the whole world will be safe and no country will have a lack of water.

My board

References

• http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=September&x=20060921144649AKllennoCcM0.8310205

• http://www.jhuccp.org/asia/indonesia/SWS_ARFAQ.pdf

• http://www.adb.org/water/actions/ino/simple-solution.asp