Pond Water

When I was in college, I had to take two semesters of science courses. (Yes, I'm still bitter that the Earth Science class I suffered through in high school didn't count.) I decided on biology for one of the semesters. I don't remember all that much from the class except a field trip we went on. Interestingly, about the only thing I remember from my geology class which I also took in college was again a field trip...

Anyway, our college shared its property with a seminary and next to the seminary was a pond which was rather uncreatively called the Sem Pond. One sunny day, my class took portable microscopes and went to the Sem Pond to look at its water up close.

(Credit: Tim Ellens, 2010)                                                   

The Sem Pond was just a normal pond like any other in the US. It sat on a beautiful college campus and had no pipes dumping waste into it. The most pollution it ever got was the annual Cold Knight Club jump in February.

But when we looked at drops of its water under the microscope, all sorts of miniscule creatures and bits of matter appeared. This seemingly innocent pond was full of things that made me cringe at the thought of drinking from it. And, I highly doubt that anyone else would have drunk from it except under the most dire of circumstances.

It makes me wonder... Why is it okay for Africans and Haitians to drink diseased, unsanitary water?

Here are some images of what they're drinking:

Cholera (Credit: CDC)

E. Coli (Credit: AP)

Typhoid Fever (Credit: A.D.A.M., MedlinePlus)

Hepatitis (Credit: CDC)

In the United States, we rarely drink water directly from the faucet anymore. We have our Brita filters and buy bottled water. We make sure to bring water purification products with us camping. I wonder why our concern over clean water does not go much beyond our country's borders...