A cool, refreshing drink of water is something many people take for granted. But what if we didn’t have access to safe drinking water? Up until 100 years ago we did not. In fact, it was often dangerous.
For thousands of years, people all over the world tried different ways to filter drinking water to purify it. But it wasn’t until the 19th century that scientists discovered germs and learned that they could carry disease through water and other media. Filtering wasn’t enough.
Waterborne illnesses such as cholera and typhoid once killed thousands of Americans each year. During the four years of the Civil War, for example, 75,000 people came down with typhoid, and more than 27,000 died from it. In 1900, typhoid claimed another 25,000 lives.
In the early days of the 20th century, chemists found that adding small amounts of chlorine to drinking water destroys bacteria, viruses and other disease-causing microorganisms.
In 1908, Jersey City and Chicago became the first U.S. cities to use chlorine to help provide safe drinking water. By 1941, chlorine disinfection was being used by 85 percent of U.S. water treatment systems, and typhoid was nearly eradicated.
In a report called “The History of Drinking Water Treatment,” (2000), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that “it was disinfectants like chlorine that played the largest role in reducing the number of waterborne disease outbreaks in the early 1900s.” And in 1997, Life magazine declared “the filtration of drinking water plus the use of chlorine is probably the most significant public health advancement of the millennium.”
Today, the vast majority of water systems in our country rely on chlorine disinfectants to provide some of the safest water in the world. So the next time you enjoy a glass of water from the tap or let the kids play in the sprinkler, you’ll be able to appreciate just how far we’ve come.
All materials courtesy of: American Chemistry Council
read more »
