Tag Archives: Water

Coronavirus crisis in Latin America made worse by poverty, inequality, U.N. agency says

By Fabian Cambero

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Latin America and the Caribbean countries in the throes of the coronavirus crisis will only see their problems made worse by festering inequality, poverty and an ailing social safety net, a United Nations agency said on Thursday.

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said social unrest was on the rise across the region, a sign that immediate action was necessary to aid hard-hit countries struggling long before the pandemic hit.

“The effects of the coronavirus pandemic have spread to all areas of human life, altering the way we interact, paralyzing economies and generating profound changes in societies,” the report said.

Persistently high levels of inequality, the agency said, combined with a sprawling informal labor market that leaves workers without protection and a lack of effective health care coverage have made those problems worse.

Urban slums on the fringes of many of the region’s cities often lack access to basic services, mean many citizens found themselves unable to access food, water and healthcare necessary to confront the crisis.

Poverty meanwhile, has crept upward, while advances in reducing inequality have stagnated, exacerbating trends seen in the five years prior to the crisis.

During that period, Latin America and Caribbean economies grew an average of just 0.3% per year overall, while extreme poverty increased from 7.8% to 11.3% of the population and poverty, from 27.8% to 30.5%.

The report also said the prolonged closure of schools in the region could constitute a “generational catastrophe” that will only deepen inequality.

The pandemic has also brought a rise in mortality that could push down life expectancy in the region depending how long the crisis endures, the agency said.

There have been at least 21,699,000 reported infections and 687,000 reported deaths caused by the novel coronavirus in Latin America and the Caribbean so far.

​ Of every 100 infections last reported around the world, about 24 were reported from countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

(Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Writing by Dave Sherwood; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Power restored to most in Texas after ‘tragic few days’

By Adrees Latif

GALVESTON, Texas (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of homes in Texas are coping without heat for a fourth day on Thursday after utilities made some progress restoring power, as the state’s leaders came under mounting criticism for their response to the winter storm.

The crisis facing the country’s second-largest state looked set to continue, with millions of people still without access to water, many struggling to find food, and freezing temperatures expected to last through Saturday.

Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in Harris County, which encompasses Houston, said the number of homes without power in her county had fallen to 33,000 from 1.4 million a few nights ago.

“It’s definitely a big positive that the power is back on for most of the residents,” Hidalgo said in an interview. “It’s been a miserable few days, a really tragic few days.”

Hidalgo warned that a “hard freeze” Thursday night could cause setbacks and encouraged donations to food banks with some residents struggling to secure food and water. She noted reports of senior centers and other vulnerable communities lacking basic supplies.

At present some 447,000 Texas households were without power, down from around 2.7 million on Wednesday, according to poweroutage.com, a website that tracks outages.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), a cooperative responsible for 90% of the state’s electricity, said on Thursday it made “significant progress” in restoring power. It did not provide detailed figures.

Angry residents have trained much of their ire on ERCOT, which critics say did not heed warnings after a cold-weather meltdown in 2011 to ensure that Texas’ energy infrastructure, which relies primarily on natural gas, was winterized.

Critics have also raised questions about the leadership of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who has called for an investigation of ERCOT. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz too came under fire for flying to the Mexican resort city of Cancun with his family, despite the storm’s fallout. The Republican lawmaker cut his trip short after his travels were reported, saying he would return to Texas and “get to the bottom of what happened” in his state.

Gary Southern, a 68-year-old real estate broker from Mineral Wells, Texas, said his power was restored on Wednesday afternoon, enabling him to have his first solid night of sleep since he lost electricity in the early hours of Monday.

“It was one of the worst things we’ve ever had to go through,” the lifelong Texan said, adding that he was frustrated at being told there would be rolling blackouts, only to go days without power at all. “I know a lot of people in our community still don’t have it (power) and are frustrated.”

The lack of power has cut off water supplies for millions, further strained hospitals’ ability to treat patients amid a pandemic, and isolated vulnerable communities with frozen roads still impassable in parts of the state.

As of Thursday morning, 154 of the 254 counties in Texas have reported disruptions in water service, affecting 13.2 million people, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Many of those affected have been told they need to boil their water.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said historically low temperatures were hindering efforts to inoculate people against COVID-19, with more than 2,000 vaccine sites in areas with power outages. In addition to aiding Texas, FEMA said on Thursday it would provide assistance to the neighboring state of Oklahoma due to the weather’s impact on its power grid.

Nearly two dozen deaths have been attributed to the cold snap. Officials say they suspect many more people have died – but their bodies have not been discovered yet.

In Galveston on the Gulf Coast of Texas, a pop-up shelter with heat but no running water had allowed about three dozen people to huddle overnight before they were ushered back out into the cold on Thursday morning to let cleaning crews get it ready to do it all over again on Thursday night.

“When you go to the bathroom, grab a bucket of water to clear the toilet – we’re going old school!” Cesar Garcia, director of Galveston’s Parks and Recreation Department, called out as he oversaw scrubbing of the shelter set up in the McGuire-Dent Recreation Center.

Garcia said he was bracing for a potentially bigger crowd tonight, perhaps closer to the 100 who sought shelter on Monday night, sleeping on bleachers or a gymnasium floor with blankets and whatever they brought with them from home.

“Tonight being the coldest night, we don’t know what to expect,” Garcia said.

While the icy conditions should gradually improve, record low temperatures will likely persist in the South Central region of the United States through Saturday, according to the National Weather Service said, which said the storm was moving northeastward, dropping snow on a swath of states in its path.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Barbara Goldberg in Maplewood, New Jersey; Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler and Jonathan Oatis)

Himalayan helicopter flies flood-hit villagers home to mourn

By Alasdair Pal

RAINI CHAK LATA, India (Reuters) – For three days, Sushama Rana waited at a makeshift dirt helipad in the Indian Himalayas to return to her village and look for her missing brother-in-law.

Yashpal Rana was herding goats when a flash flood swept down a remote valley on Sunday, smashing everything in its path including two hydroelectric power stations.

More than 200 people are feared killed, although most of those are still missing.

The wall of water also swept several bridges into the valley, home to more than a thousand people spread over 13 villages.

An eight-seater Airbus helicopter more often used to carry tourists has begun ferrying supplies to the villages, some of which are suffering from intermittent power and water.

But it is also carrying people back to their home villages to mourn.

Yashpal married his wife a year ago, and is the father of a four-month-old son.

His family has given up hope of finding him alive.

“We just want to find his body and perform his last rites,” Sushama said.

The valley is home to a key paramilitary post by the Chinese border, and many of the troops, known as the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), are helping in the relief work from a command post at a primary school in Lata, one of the affected villages.

Some can now only be accessed via a 5km trek on foot, Deputy Commandant Raj, the officer in charge of the operation said. Dozens of solar powered lamps are being sent up towards the border to those without power.

The Indian military’s Mi-17 and Chinook helicopters are useless when trying to access the villages, perched on steep hills with little flat ground.

Instead, the relief operation is relying on a commercial craft – normally used for pleasure rides at a nearby ski resort – to land on a narrow strip of concrete perched by the Dauliganga river.

Jagged, snow-capped peaks loom over the valley, which is covered in forests of pine and fir.

In contrast to the mud and tangled metal remnants downstream, the crystalline Dauliganga – a tributary of the Ganges river worshipped as a god by many Indians – sparkles in the sun.

Reuters travelled on one of the relief missions into the valley, with returning locals in the passenger seats and sacks of rice and lentils in the helicopter’s small hold.

But in Raini Chak Lata, the first village in the valley to be cut off, the most pressing issue is not food, but processing the events of Sunday’s disaster, the causes of which are still be to be conclusively determined.

“Nobody wants to eat when family members are not able to come,” Yashpal’s brother Rajpal said.

Yashpal had two postgraduate business degrees, according to Rajpal, but was not able to find a job. He had returned to Raini Chak Lata, and was down at the river bank with the family’s goats when the torrent of water, mud and dust came roaring down the valley.

“He is probably somewhere there,” he said.

When Sushama saw the first helicopter of the day on Friday, she wept and ran towards it, before being held back by workers as the blades swept up a cloud of dust.

Authorities have transported more than 300 people since the disaster, but the list of people wanting to ride is long.

Finally, she was able to board the final flight of the day, which swept over destroyed dams.

She clutched her shawl as she disembarked.

“Somehow, after waiting for three days, I have finally arrived,” she said, walking the mile to the village on foot.

(Reporting by Alasdair Pal; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

No water! No fear! Kenya’s community leaders step up to coronavirus challenge

By Katharine Houreld

NAIROBI (Reuters) – Few residents in Nairobi’s sprawling informal settlement of Kibera have access to running water to wash their hands – but most have heard of a deadly new disease killing off people in China and Europe.

Although the disease was slow to hit Africa, more than 30 countries now have cases of the coronavirus – Kenya has seven. So concerned residents in neighbourhoods neglected by Kenya’s notoriously corrupt government are setting up handwashing stations and organising teams of volunteers to educate people about the disease.

“We can’t sit pretty in our houses knowing that tomorrow we may have a crisis beyond our control,” said Ed Gachuna, the chief finance officer of Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO), an organisation set up by Kennedy Odede, who was born and brought up in Kibera.

Community-led initiatives like SHOFCO’s coronavirus drive are far more likely to win compliance from residents than edicts from a government noted only for its neglect – an important lesson learned from the Ebola outbreaks in West Africa in 2014 and in Congo last year.

Kibera, home to more than half a million people, has little government presence bar an occasional policeman. There are no formal water connections. Residents illegally tap government lines using rubber hoses that leak into open sewers. Police cut them when they find them, said Gachuna, leaving the area waterless for days at a time.

But SHOFCO runs schools, clinics and a network of drinking water points linked by aerial pipes suspended far above the rubbish-strewn alleys, keeping the water clean. SHOFCO’s purification plant provides Kibera residents drinking water at heavily subsidised rates – 2 shillings (2 cents) for 20 litres.

On Wednesday, crowds of volunteers – some wearing T-shirts emblazoned “Fighting Coronavirus” – gathered at the SHOFCO offices, listening to a talk about symptoms and prevention before disappearing down the narrow alleys.

A friend of one volunteer approached, hand out to greet her, but the woman recoiled dramatically, shouting “Nooooooo – coroonaaaaaavirrrrrrus!” to peals of laughter from both women and appreciative cheers from children. The women put their hands on their hearts instead.

Behind them, young men tied large plastic drums and boxes of soap onto perilously tilting motorbikes to set up the first wave of 24 SHOFCO handwashing stations. Keeping the disease at bay is their only hope.

Many families here cluster into single-room shacks; few here have the space to isolate, or the luxury of working from home. Few can stockpile food either – most work daily jobs that earn a couple of dollars a day. The markets are busy and greetings enthusiastic.

“Africans love greetings and physical contact,” explained auditor Emmanuel Olima, shaking drops of water from his hands and one of the new handwashing stations. “So even if you hide your hands, you might not avoid a handshake.”

The stations are staffed by volunteers like 24-year-old Judy Adhiambo, whose dimpled smile greets each passerby as she tells them the symptoms of the disease and how to prevent it. Children squeal with delight at the water and suds, but the adults listen.

“Rub between the fingers very well,” Adhiambo advises a young boy washing his hands with his mother.

“Asante,” the woman says quietly as they leave – thank you.

(Editing by Giles Elgood)

From Brazil to Cambodia, conflicts flaring over land, water

By Rina Chandran

BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Conflicts over land and water flared across the world this year amid greater competition for resources and increasing hostility towards farmers and indigenous people, according to two reports published Tuesday.

At least 108 people were killed trying to protect their land from encroaching industries in 23 countries from January to November, human rights advocacy group PAN Asia Pacific said – compared to 91 killings recorded in the same period last year.

The Philippines was the deadliest country for a third year with 50 killings, or nearly one killing per week, it said.

Colombia recorded 27 killings, while Brazil had nine, with most crimes linked to energy, mining, plantation and logging industries.

“The landless face more risks than ever before, especially where the disregard for their rights converges with a conservative politics and an environmental emergency that the former heightens,” said Arnold Padilla, a regional coordinator at PAN Asia Pacific.

From Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, so-called strongmen politicians are stripping away environmental and human rights protections to promote business, Padilla told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The Philippines was also ranked the deadliest nation for land rights activists last year by another human rights group, Britain-based Global Witness, which recorded 164 killings worldwide.

A spokesman for Duterte did not respond to a request for comment.

In Brazil, indigenous tribes are facing escalating violence under Bolsonaro, with two indigenous men shot dead last week, not far from where a prominent tribesman who defended the Amazon rainforest was killed last month.

Meanwhile, a rush to build hydropower dams from Chile to Cambodia has uprooted tens of thousands of people and destroyed ecosystems they rely on, non-profit International Rivers said.

Collectively, dams have displaced more than 80 million people worldwide so far, and affected an estimated half a billion people, according to data compiled by International Rivers.

“Dams can exacerbate poverty and worsen conditions for people who earn their livelihoods from land and river ecosystems,” it said.

Chinese firms have become the biggest players in dam building, International Rivers said, as the country rolls out its Belt and Road Initiative, a trans-continental scheme with trillions of dollars in infrastructure projects.

Chinese developers have said they adhere to global environmental and human rights standards.

In the tiny Southeast Asian nation of Laos, more than 100 dams are in operation, under construction or are planned, bringing much-needed investment to the impoverished nation.

But the collapse of the Xepian-Xe Nam Noy hydropower dam in Laos in July 2018 killed dozens of people and displaced over 6,000, underlining concerns over their safety.

In October, the first hydropower dam on the lower Mekong River began commercial operations in Laos amid protests from Thai villagers who say the Xayaburi Dam and others in the works will destroy their livelihoods.

Hydropower could impact more than 300,000 kilometers (186,411 miles) of rivers by 2050, estimates International Rivers.

(Reporting by Rina Chandran @rinachandran; Editing by Zoe Tabary.

Ten years after ‘suicide’ mission, NASA thirsts for lunar water

By Joey Roulette

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A decade after NASA sent a rocket crashing into the moon’s south pole, spewing a plume of debris that revealed vast reserves of ice beneath the barren lunar surface, the space agency is racing to pick up where its little-remembered project left off.

The so-called LCROSS mission was hastily carried out 10 years ago Wednesday in a complex orbital dance of two “suicide” spacecraft and one mapping satellite. It proved a milestone in the discovery of a natural lunar resource that could be key to NASA’s plans for renewed human exploration of the moon and ultimately visits to Mars and beyond.

“The LCROSS mission was a game changer,” NASA’s chief Jim Bridenstine told Reuters, adding that once water had been found the United States “should have immediately as a nation changed our direction to the moon so we could figure out how to use it.”

The agency now has the chance to follow up on the pioneering mission, after Vice President Mike Pence in March ordered NASA to land humans on the lunar surface by 2024, accelerating a goal to colonize the moon as a staging ground for eventual missions to Mars.

Bridenstine says the moon holds billions of tons of water ice, although the exact amount and whether it’s present in large chunks of ice or combined with the lunar soil remains unknown. To find out before astronauts arrive on the moon, NASA is working with a handful of companies to put rovers on the lunar surface by 2022.

“We need next to get on the surface with a rover to prospect for water, drill into it, and determine how suitable it is for extraction,” said Jack Burns, director of the Network for Exploration and Space Science at the University of Colorado.

Instead of launching expensive fuel loads from Earth, scientists say the lunar water could be extracted and broken down into its two main components, hydrogen and oxygen, potentially turning the moon into a fuel arsenal for missions to deeper parts of the solar system.

OPEN KIMONO

Weeks before the LCROSS impact booster struck the moon’s south pole, the mission’s development timeline “was a bad rush to the finish line,” Tony Colaprete, principal investigator for LCROSS, told Reuters.

“We wanted to make as large of a hole as possible to get as much materials out of the shadows and into the sunlight,” Colaprete said, describing an unusually fast-paced program using technology that had never been used in space before.

Engineers and mission leaders used the business phrase “open kimono” about disclosing company information to characterize the program’s breakneck development speed and the need for clear and open lines of communication between contractors and NASA.

“That almost became a mantra for the project,” Colaprete said.

The current lunar program is also “forcing some cultural changes” at NASA, he added, which has undergone a series of high-level management changes and delays with the agency’s commercial crew program, a public-private effort to resume U.S. human spaceflight for the first time since 2011.

“People are coming together in a way like they did on LCROSS.”

(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Richard Pullin)

Wider Image: The Indian children who need to take a train to get to water

By Rajendra Jadhav

MUKUNDWADI, India (Reuters) – As their classmates set off to play after school each day, nine-year-old Sakshi Garud and her neighbor Siddharth Dhage, 10, are among a small group of children who take a 14-km (9-mile) return train journey from their village in India to fetch water.

Their families are some of the poorest in the hamlet of Mukundwadi, in the western state of Maharashtra, a village that has suffered back-to-back droughts.

India’s monsoons have brought abundant rain and even floods in many parts of the country, but rainfall in the region around Mukundwadi has been 14% below average this year and aquifers and borewells are dry.

“I don’t like to spend time bringing water, but I don’t have a choice,” Dhage said.

“This is my daily routine,” said Garud. Their cramped shanty homes are just 200 meters (220 yards) from the train station. “After coming from school, I don’t get time to play. I need to get water first.”

They are not alone. Millions of Indians do not have secure water supplies, according to the UK-based charity, WaterAid. It says 12% of Indians, or about 163 million people, do not have access to clean water near their homes – the biggest proportion of any country.

For an interactive graphic on India’s depleting water resources, please click https://tmsnrt.rs/2mgof1L

Recognizing the issue, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised to spend more than 3.5 trillion rupees ($49 billion) to bring piped water to every Indian household by 2024.

More than 100 families in Garud and Dhage’s neighborhood do not have access to piped water and many depend on private water suppliers, who charge up to 3,000 rupees ($42) for a 5,000-litre tanker during summer months.

But private water supply is something Garud and Dhage’s parents say they can not afford.

“Nowadays, I don’t get enough money to buy groceries. I can’t buy water from private suppliers,” said Dhage’s father, Rahul, a construction worker. “I am not getting work every day.”

PIPE DREAM

The children take the train daily to fetch water from the nearby city of Aurangabad.

The train is often overcrowded, so a group of small children jostling to get on board with pitchers to fill with water is not always welcome.

“Some people help me, sometimes they complain to railway officials for putting pitchers near the door. If we don’t put them near the door, we can not take them out quickly when the train stops,” Dhage said.

Garud’s grandmother Sitabai Kamble and an elderly neighbor help occasionally by pushing them on board in the face of irritable passengers.

“Sometimes they kick the pitchers away, they grumble,” Kamble said.

When the train pulls into Aurangabad thirty minutes later, they scramble to fill the pitchers at nearby water pipes. Garud can’t reach the tap, so she relies on her taller sister, Aaysha, 14, and grandmother.

Others, like Anjali Gaikwad, 14, and her sisters, also board the train every few days to collect water and wash clothes.

Their neighbor Prakash Nagre often tags along with soap and shampoo. “There’s no water to bathe at home,” he says.

When the train returns them to Mukundwadi, they have just under a minute to disembark. At times, Dhage’s mother, Jyoti, is waiting at the station to help.

“I’m careful, but sometimes pitchers fall off the door in the melee and our work is wasted,” she said, holding her infant in one arm and a pitcher in the other. “I can’t leave my daughter at home alone so I have to take her along.”

(Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; Additional reporting by Francis Mascarenhas; Writing by Sankalp Phartiyal; Editing by Euan Rocha and Neil Fullick)

Preparing for disasters. Yes, it can happen to you.

Hurricane Michael survivor Yvette Beasley stands in her front yard during a wellbeing check by a 50 Star Search and Rescue team in Fountain, Florida, U.S., October 17, 2018. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By Kami Klein

The statistics on a recent emergency preparation survey commissioned by the National Ad Council stated that 60 percent of Americans believe that preparation for natural or man-made disasters is of great importance to them, yet only an astounding 17 percent claim to be completely prepared for an emergency situation.  

Regardless of how many massive catastrophes people have seen on the news or heard of from friends or relatives, despite the ad campaigns on preparedness by communities and state governments, the common sense notion of preparing for an emergency gets pushed aside. This can and does have great consequences for whole communities.  

In 2016 the US Navy, Coast Guard, and Washington state’s National Guard created a full-scale, nine-day drill to test how well they could respond to a massive earthquake in the Cascadia Subduction Zone. That area covers Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland through northern California.

The 83-page report comes to many deeply concerning conclusions. The authors admit the systems are not ready, infrastructure would collapse, and they’d have a full-blown humanitarian crisis in ten days.

In the summations it was written:

“Through the two-year ramp-up and the culminating functional and full-scale exercises, the following overall conclusions can be drawn:  There is an urgent need for residents to prepare.  Despite the ongoing public education efforts and community preparedness programs, our families, communities, schools, hospitals, and businesses are not prepared for the catastrophic disaster that a worst-case earthquake would cause.”

According to the World Health Organization, every year natural disasters kill around 90,000 people and affect close to 160 million people worldwide. Natural disasters include earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, landslides, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, heat waves and droughts.

Emergency management professionals say people do understand that they should prepare for disasters but when it comes to something in life that creates fear and when you have never experienced a disaster situation personally, the human mind will rationalize and think “Those bad things won’t happen to me.” There are others who will also put the thoughts out of their minds and believe that rescue groups will bring what they need to their family in the event that they are in an emergency situation.  The reality of mass disasters proves over and over again that there is never enough help and many times it can be impossible to get to those that are affected because of great damage to roads and infrastructure.

Recently the massive flooding in our country’s breadbasket, caused by incredible storms and mountain snowmelt created islands of muddied silt instead of acres of farmland.  It has been weeks since this event and yet many communities have been without electricity and their water systems because crews are still having trouble getting to them. Worse yet, there have been round after round of intense storms, tornadoes and heavy rains contributing to the flooding of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers which is impeding the recovery efforts.

Facts are best for combating fear. The weather is an unpredictable force. In the United States alone, we average, 8 hurricanes a year, 2 that are major.  Last year we experienced a whopping 66,535 earthquakes that average at a  2.5 and above. Every season, the U.S. will be pounded by at least 1,154 tornados. In 2018 alone there were 58,083 wildfires. The likelihood that at some time you and your family could be involved in a disaster situation is higher than any of us want to believe.

The responsibility of preparing belongs to every family. There are basics to have on hand that not only will help you survive the worst but give you security when those panicked moments arrive with little time to respond.  Food and water are top on the list along with flashlights, and a source to cook meals. While some emergency personnel recommends only a 72 hour supply, that number is quickly changing due to the increased knowledge found in experiencing these catastrophes to having “at the very least” a two week supply on hand.  

A very good resource for what you need for your emergency kits and supplies can be found at Ready.gov.  Professional emergency management teams encourage you to look at the posted guidelines in the same way as you do with your insurance policies.  Become “matter of fact” about the possibilities and simply begin. By taking one step at a time there will be no reason to feel overwhelmed.

If you need inspiration, please read the testimony “It can happen to you” by Evonne Richard. whose family survived the deadly storm April 27th, 2011 in Apison, Tennessee. This town had been home to her for over 30 years with never a tornado or disaster.  The community was wiped out, many dead and the aftermath quite chaotic. But only weeks before the storm, Evonne observed a billboard regarding “How to Prepare” and felt compelled to act on it.  Her story will inspire you to do the same.

We cannot count on government offices nor rescue groups to help us in times of disaster. Most will be overwhelmed.  These unexpected events will continue to come. Together we must learn to count on ourselves to have on hand what we need for survival.  It isn’t a whim, nor is it something to put off. With the statistics of the possibilities that can and will happen to most of us in a lifetime, it makes common sense!!   

Morningside believes strongly in the practice of preparing.  We want you to be ready for anything to help your family and your community. In order to stay on the air and support this ministry, Morningside does have special offers of survival items including food, generators, water filtration, and other great items. These items are well researched and in most cases at a reduced price from items you can find online.  Don’t forget that you can also check out PTLshop.com YOUR faith-based shopping network!

Start Preparing!  It is one of the few things in life you will never regret.  

 

Arsenic, lead, PFAS chemicals; A toxic brew is being found in our drinking water and it’s getting worse.

Water in glass, Clean drinking water

By Kami Klein

Water…we are all taught from an early age that drinking water is a must for our body to remain hydrated and flush out the bad stuff.  Health authorities commonly recommend eight 8-ounce glasses, which equals about 2 liters, or half a gallon per day. The American people seem to be getting the message and are drinking more water than ever before. but reports and studies recently released are creating increasing alarm about the many dangerous chemicals that we are consuming with every drop. Americans get drinking water from private wells, tap water from public water treatment plants and in buying bottled water. Many concerned consumers are urging scientists for in-depth analysis of the health risks for each.  

Groundwater contamination

The United States Geological Survey says that about 44 million people in the U.S. get their drinking water from private wells. Surveys show about half of those have their wells tested at least once a year.  When flooding occurs, such as in this spring’s historic storms, thousands can be exposed to a dangerous mix of materials in their water.

Many in the Midwest that are affected rely on groundwater for rural and small municipal water supply. Household, farm, and small business wells situated in broad, sand and gravel valleys and glaciated rolling countryside could be standing in water for several days, raising the potential for contamination if the wells aren’t properly maintained. Exposure to E. coli, coliform, and other pathogenic microbes from human and animal fecal matter in floodwaters is a common health concern following a major flooding event.

But there is a growing problem in many states that has nothing to do with flooding.   And that is from a natural substance found in our soil…Arsenic.

Though arsenic can be found in the air and soil, the World Health Organization says the greatest threat to public health globally comes from groundwater, which is contaminated as it flows through rocks and minerals containing arsenic and resides in wells and tributaries.  

In a recent study published by the American Heart Association Journal, the dangers of increased and prolonged exposure to arsenic in water and in some food such as rice are becoming more evident. The study found that young adults free of diabetes and cardiovascular disease developed heart damage after only five years of exposure to low-to-moderate levels of arsenic commonly found in groundwater. Arsenic has also been linked to various cancers, kidney damage, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

“It is important for the general public to be aware that arsenic can be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, the study’s lead author, Dr. Gernot Pichler said. “Private wells are currently not regulated and people using private wells, including children and young adults, are not protected.”

Millions Exposed to PFAS chemicals

In a recent report by the non-profit Environmental Working Group and Northeastern University, it has been found that people in nearly every state in the U.S. are exposed to unhealthy drinking water both in private wells and through public water systems. According to researchers, 43 states have locations, including drinking water sites, contaminated with PFAS chemicals

Taken from Pentagon data and water utility reports the study shows an estimated 19 million people are exposed to contaminated water. PFAS, are synthetic chemicals found in many products, including food packaging, household cleaners and nonstick cookware, according to the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency

In an interview with CBSN, David Andrews, a senior scientist for the Environmental Working Group said, “This should be frightening to all Americans in many ways. these chemicals… don’t break down in our body and they don’t break down in our environment and they actually stick to our blood. So levels tend to increase over time.”

The EPA stated in March 2019 that 92 percent of the water used every day by Americans meets all of the EPA requirements for safe drinking water.  According to Andrews, the EPA  has not set a new legal drinking water limit for any contaminant in over two decades. And feels that the whole system of regulating chemicals that may end up in our water is broken.  “The agency is really falling behind the science here.”

But let’s say that the EPA is correct and do the math on their claims. Nationwide, 327 million Americans each drink two to eight glasses of water on average every day. If 8 percent of that supply doesn’t meet EPA standards, that’s up to 209 million unsafe glasses of water per day, or 2.3 billion gallons of water—enough to fill a quarter of a million bathtubs. In short, high compliance numbers do not mean everything is fine.

In May 2019, Representatives from both parties of Congress released a half-dozen bills in response to PFAS contamination. The bills range from providing more funding for communities tasked with the cost of treating contaminated water to increasing transparency in reporting chemical flows and prohibitions on products with PFAS.

But as many consumer groups have stated, the damage is there and many feel that it would take decades to fix this ever-increasing problem.  

Filtered is Best

Many have turned to bottled water as a safer alternative. In fact, Americans consume more than 8.6 gallons of bottled water each year.  Studies on the health risks of bottled water have shown that plastic these bottles are made of and can basically leak into the water.

BPA, a component often found in plastic, is a hormone disruptor that can have a wide range of impacts on the human body, including hormone imbalance, toxicity, inflammation, and even cancer.  BPA isn’t even the only component of plastic that is potentially dangerous—there are dozens of other chemicals that can have adverse effects on the body, endocrine system, and other organs.

What is the solution?  How do we keep our family from toxic chemicals?  How do we know our water is safe?

The best solution is to filter your water.  Bottled water, which many believe is the best alternative is costly.  A good filtering system can save you money and remove ALL of the chemicals used to treat water as well as those that are leaking into our water systems.  

There are many advances in the past decade of filtering systems that remove more than 99 percent of pathogens, bacteria, lead and more.

The light on the problems with our water quality are becoming brighter by the day. In the meantime, we must tackle the problem with common sense and safety in mind.  A filtering system for your drinking water is what makes the most sense for YOUR health and for your family.

 

There are many water filtration systems out there.  Morningside highly recommends Seychelle products.  

References for this Article: Newsweek, CNN, CBS, Agency for Toxic Substances, National Groundwater Association, Livescience.com, World Health Organization,

‘Water is life’: unexpected rainfall revives Iraq’s historic marshlands

Iraqi Marsh Arab girls walk near buffaloes at the Chebayesh marsh in Dhi Qar province, Iraq April 13, 2019. REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani

By Raya Jalabi

CHIBAYISH MARSHES, Iraq (Reuters) – This time last year, most of Iraq’s historic marshlands were dry, desiccated by upstream damming and a chronic lack of rainfall.

Now, local farmers are counting their blessings after unexpected heavy rainfall at the end of 2018 caused the dams to overflow by early January and water came gushing back to the wetlands in southeastern Iraq.

For Yunus Khalil, a farmer raising water buffalo in the central marsh, the lack of water meant he had to sell most of his herd at a loss last year.

“We were terrified the water wouldn’t come back,” Khalil said. “It would’ve been the end for us.”

The marshes, thought to be the biblical Garden of Eden and named a UNESCO world heritage site in 2016, are experiencing their highest water levels since they were reclaimed in 2003, said Jassim al-Asadi, southern director of local NGO Nature Iraq and a native of the marshlands, which stretch to the Iran border.

“God knows how much we suffered last year,” Khalil said. “He protected us.”

Saddam Hussein accused the area’s inhabitants, the Marsh Arabs, of treachery during the 1980-1988 war with Iran and later drained the marshes – which before then had stretched across more than 3,700 square miles (9,583 sq km) – to flush out rebels.

Many residents fled, but after Saddam’s overthrow in 2003, parts of the marshland were reflooded and around 250,000 Marsh Arabs have cautiously trickled back.

Many had moved to farmland in nearby provinces, or went to live in exile in Iran. Their years away brought a change to the vibrant local culture, residents say, and more conservative norms, particularly regarding the role of women who have long worked alongside men in the marshes.

“You used to hear women singing as they pushed their boats through the marshes at dawn,” said Taher Mehsin, a fishermen in his late 60s. “Now, some of the men won’t let their women out of the house.”

NEW PROBLEMS

The area has been home to the Marsh Arabs for millennia, and water is essential to maintaining their way of life.

Though many were eager to return home after two decades away, life in the marshes is tough and revolves around fishing and raising water buffalo. The few schools and government-run health clinics are miles away from the open water, where many people live without electricity.

Residents have to make daily trips on long wooden boats to buy bottled water for themselves and their families as the surrounding waters are too salty to drink.

An Iraqi Marsh Arab man sits on a boat at the Chebayesh marsh in Dhi Qar province, Iraq April 13, 2019. REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani

An Iraqi Marsh Arab man sits on a boat at the Chebayesh marsh in Dhi Qar province, Iraq April 13, 2019. REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani

Years of low water levels have caused other problems, including less tall grass for the buffalo to graze on, and a drop in the variety of fish.

The local carp, previously local fishermen’s best seller, hasn’t been seen in the waters here all year. Instead, the fishermen and women now catch just one type of small fish which most don’t recall having seen until recently.

After casting their nets the previous night, they haul their take at dawn to local buyers, who are currently paying around $2.50 (3,000 dinars) a kilo after haggling; a 50 percent drop in price compared to 2017.

“What else can we do?” said Mehsin as he pushed his boat out from the shore, having netted $10 (12,000 Iraqi dinars) for his day’s take.

“Water is life here. Fish and animals can’t live without it, and neither can we.”

(Reporting by Raya Jalabi; Editing by Susan Fenton)