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According to the United Nations, an estimated 1 billion people do not
have access to clean, fresh water. Each year, 5 million people die of
waterborne illnesses. The world's growing population will make the
problem worse. And guess what? It is not just the Third World that is
facing this issue!
An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) release contained information
stating that, no matter where you live in the U.S., there is likely to
be some toxic substance in your groundwater. Indeed, the EPA estimates
that one in five Americans representing 25% of the nation's drinking
water systems consume tap water that violates EPA safety standards.
Substances that are added to drinking water such as chlorine can form
toxic compounds-such as trihalomethanes, or THMs-and have been linked to
certain cancers. The EPA has established enforceable standards for more
than 100 contaminants. However, other studies have identified that there
are more than 2,110 contaminants in the nation's water supplies.
Ultraviolet (UV) Water Purification
Researchers have begun to shed new light--ultraviolet light--on the
problem of providing clean drinking water in communities around the
world. Unlike chlorine and current filtration methods, the Ultraviolet
(UV) Water Purification technology can zap emerging dangerous pathogens,
such as Cryptosporidium, which contaminated Milwaukee's drinking water
supply in 1993, killing 110 and sickening 400,000.
"The excitement in Ultraviolet (UV) Water Purification for
me," says John Malley, a member of the University of New Hampshire
(UNH) Environmental Research Group, "is that we have the chance to
improve the microbiological safety of drinking water for hundreds of
millions of people around the world and save the public billions of
dollars while doing it." "Cryptosporidium is hard to filter
out, and chlorine has no effect on it," notes Malley. "If you
put it in a bottle of bleach for a week and take it out, it still makes
a mouse sick."
Ultraviolet (UV) Water Purification treatment is one of several
technologies that the Environmental Protection Agency recommends to
communities to meet the 2002 new, more stringent drinking-water
standards. UV light is not only effective, but also very efficient. It
can disinfect water at about one-tenth the cost of other treatment
methods, in part because the equipment is compact.
Ultraviolet (UV) Water Purification technology has been used in Europe
for about 75 years. UV treatment of drinking water in the USA dates to
about 1992.
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