Water Treatment and Rainwater Harvesting

Abstract

Water is a valuable resource that is essential in everyday life, domestically and industrially. As such, it is now considered to be the blue gold of the 21^st century. However, increased human demands and usage tend to degrade water quality, which could be devastating to the natural environment and consequently to human health. With the ever-growing human population, the problem of availability of adequate supplies of safe drinking water is worsening. According to UNICEF, 80% of diseases and death among children is caused by unsafe water. Water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera, amoebic infection contribute to nearly 4 million child deaths every year. The use of unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation is part and parcel of the daily existence for more than one billion people world-wide.