On this planet , there is much more water than there is land, but still 1.1 billion people lack access to an improved water supply - approximately one in six people on earth.
The World Health Organization and UNICEF state that even in the United States, which has one of the best supplies of drinking water in the world; threats to drinking water quality still exist. Even though, in the United States forty-eight million people receive their drinking water from private or household wells.
In naming 2008 the U.N.’s International Year of Sanitation to highlight the problem, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said “The international community has failed to deliver on this basic right. Today, more than 2 billion people around the world lack access to basic sanitation services.”
Ban further added “an estimated 42,000 people die every week from diseases related to low water quality and an absence of adequate sanitation. And this situation is unacceptable.”
There are many reasons which make water quality susceptible and most of the water around the world is vulnerable from climate changes, to natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, to possible terrorism attempts, and to industrialization.
But, today there are many water treatment technologies that can provide a better quality of water. There are also new technologies that take existing methods and improve upon them to provide better efficiency, lower energy consumption and lower cost.
Among the most popular aesthetic products, for at-home use, are the water pitcher and water faucet mount filters. They can eliminate chloroform, industrial and agricultural pollutants, metals, off-tastes, chlorine, sediment, and cysts such as cryptosporidium and giardia, which are derived from animal waste. These are fine products, but are not designed to stop all bacteria and viruses from entering the water supply.
The other water treatment methods are reverse osmosis, ion exchange, filtration, ultraviolet treatment to eradicate chemicals, pathogens and other dangerous contaminants. But, before you invest in a system, each water treatment device or method should be analyzed and tested. There are many water filters manufactured by top water filtering companies which you can rely upon for quality drinking water.