Water is an essential element to human survival, and we use and are affected by water much more than we realize. Twenty percent of Americans drink contaminated tap water, as twenty-five percent of the public water supplies are polluted with potentially dangerous substances. Each year, 900,000,000 Americans become ill due to unsafe drinking water. Seventy-five percent of a living tree is water, and the human body is sixty-five to seventy-five percent water. Each day, four hundred gallons of water are recycled through our kidneys. An average of 150 gallons of water is used to make a Sunday newspaper, and 39,000 are used to make an automobile. Flushing the toilet takes about five to seven gallons of water, and one gallon of gasoline has the potential to contaminate 750,000 gallons of clean water. As little as one to two percent of the earth's fresh water is accessible as drinking water, and the average American uses two hundred gallons of water per day for such purposes as showering and washing hands. These overwhelming statistics show that water is extremely important to our everyday lives.
