Water and Health

Water is essential for basic survival as it constitutes up to 60% of the human adult body. However, contaminated water can spread disease and cause poisoning. Pathogens such as bacteria, viruses, and parasites can spread by water and cause communicable diseases. Most of these are considered communicable because they can spread from one person to another via contaminated water or other vectors. So water is a vehicle for spread of the pathogens and other environmental health hazards. The most common diseases are diarrheal diseases, such as cholera, typhoid,paratyphoid, salmonella, giardiasis, and cryptosporidiosis. Other environmental health hazards may be chemical and radioactive constituents of water. Indeed, some chemical substances dissolved in water as a result of natural processes may be essential ingredients of dietary intake, and some may be harmful when they exceed certain concentrations. 

These are metals, synthetic organics and essential elements such as fluoride,iodine and selenium. This is why the quality of the drinking water is a universal health concern,more so in developing nations.

Infectious diseases caused by pathogenic bacteria, viruses and parasites are the most common and widespread health risk associated with drinking water. The elimination of all these agents from drinking water has to be a high priority. The provision of a safe supply of drinking water depends upon use of either a protected high-quality ground water, surface water, or a properly selected and operated series of treatments capable to reduce pathogens and other contaminants to the negligible health risk. These diseases are usually classified according to the nature of the pathogen. However, a more useful way of classifying these diseases is according to the various aspects of the environment that human intervention can alter.

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