Water facts

Did you know?

• If a large bucket of water represents all the water on the planet an eggcup full (2%) represents the amount of water frozen in ice and a teaspoonful (1%) represents that available for drinking.
• Raindrops are not tear shaped. High speed cameras reveal that raindrops actually resemble the shape of small hamburger buns.
• The human body contains between 40 and 50 litres of water.
• You can survive for a month without food but less than a week without water.
• Less than 1% of water treated by public water systems is used for drinking and cooking.
• Since 1950 the world population has doubled but water consumption has increased six fold.
• We each use about 150 litres of water every day.
• The average person in the developing world uses 10 litres of water a day about the same as we use for one toilet flush.
• The weight of water that women in Africa and Asia carry on their heads is commonly 20Kg. The same as the average UK luggage allowance.
• 1.1 billion people, one sixth of the world’s population, do not have access to safe water.
• 2.4 billion people, two fifths of the world’s population, do not have access to adequate sanitation.
• The simple act of washing hands with soap and water can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by over 40%.
• When combined water, sanitation and hygiene can reduce the number of deaths caused by diarrhoeal diseases by 65%
• A child dies every 15 seconds from diseases associated with a lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene that is the equivalent of 20 jumbo jets crashing every day.

Strange but true!

• Kielder Water, Northumbrian Water's largest reservoir, holds 2.5 billion bathfulls of water - 200,000 million litres!
• It takes eight pints of water to make one pint of beer.
• It costs less than one pound a year for one person to drink eight glasses of tap water a day, compared with £500 for the same amount in bottled water.
• There are around nine spoons full of sugar in a standard can of soft drink.
• A cow drinks 80 litres of water every day!
• Water is unique in that it is the only natural substance that is found in all three states – liquid, solid (ice) and gas (steam).
• It is also unusual that the solid form, ice, is less dense than the liquid form.
• Cucumbers are 95% water, cabbage is 91% water, jellyfish are 95% water and bananas are 75% water.
• A person can live a month without food but only a week without water.
• An ant can survive two weeks under water.
• It takes more than 5,600 litres of water to process a single barrel of beer.
• Armadillos can walk under water!