Upworthy’s book GOOD PEOPLE is coming this year — check it out!

Shop
 Explore 

water

Family

Most pregnant women know what they need to bring to the hospital. Doris' list had something extra.

For Doris, the list was very different.

via GQ/YouTube

Doris Alikado talks about her personal experience of maternal health in Tanzania.

True

Bathrobe. Socks. Insurance card. Snacks.

Sound at all familiar? Maybe, maybe not.

These items would commonly be found on a checklist of things that expecting parents should bring to the hospital with them — in the U.S., anyway.

Doing the checklist.

Image created from Pixabay.

But what is that list like in other parts of the world?

For Doris, that list included water.

Doris, who lives Morogoro, Tanzania, had to bring her own water to the health center where she was giving birth in 2014. The water she brought was used to clean the nurse's hands, clean the delivery area, and wash the babies (she had twins!). Unfortunately, the water Doris brought ran out before she was able to wash herself or her clothes, so she had to wait 24 hours before cleaning herself.

parenting, parenting and children, Tanzania

Doris and family lives in Morogoro, Tanzania.

via GQ/YouTube

I'll let Doris tell the story herself:

Lack of access to clean water in Tanzania is a very big deal.

Everything turned out alright for Doris and her babies, but thousands of other women aren't as lucky. But there are ways to help: Organizations and individuals are pitching in to help build water taps, rainwater tanks, and latrines in Tanzanian hospitals, and they're making a huge difference.

"I want to express my gratitude to the health workers ... because they have a great sense of humor with the patients. But the problem is the availability of enough water." — Doris Alikado

This article originally appeared on 03.26.15

From Your Site Articles

Sustainability

Scientists tested 3 popular bottled water brands for nanoplastics using new tech, and yikes

The results were alarming—an average of 240,000 nanoplastics per 1 liter bottle—but what does it mean for our health?

Suzy Hazelwood/Canva

Columbia University researchers tested bottled water for nanoplastics and found hundreds of thousands of them.

Evian, Fiji, Voss, SmartWater, Aquafina, Dasani—it's impressive how many brands we have for something humans have been consuming for millennia. Despite years of studies showing that bottled water is no safer to drink than tap water, Americans are more consuming more bottled water than ever, to the tune of billions of dollars in bottled water sales.

People cite convenience and taste in addition to perceived safety for reasons they prefer bottle to tap, but the fear factor surrounding tap water is still a driving force. It doesn't help when emergencies like floods cause tap water contamination or when investigations reveal issues with lead pipes in some communities, but municipal water supplies are tested regularly, and in the vast majority of the U.S., you can safely grab a glass of water from a tap.

And now, a new study on nanoplastics found in three popular bottled water brands is throwing more data into the bottled vs. tap water choice.

Researchers from Columbia University used a new laser-guided technology to detect nanoplastics that had previously evaded detection due to their miniscule size. The new technology can detect, count and analyze and chemical structure of nanoparticles, and they found seven different major types of plastic: polyamide, polypropylene, polyethylene, polymethyl methacrylate, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene, and polyethylene terephthalate.

In contrast to a 2018 study that found around 300 plastic particles in an average liter of bottled water, the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in January of 2024 found 240,000 nanoplastic particles per liter bottle on average between the three brands studied. (The name of the brands were not indicated in the study.)

As opposed to microplastics, nanoplastics are too small to be seen by microscope. Their size is exactly why experts are concerned about them, as they are small enough to invade human cells and potentially disrupt cellular processes.

Columbia researchers found that bottled water contains hundreds of thousands of previously uncounted plastic particles\u2014particles small enough to pass into the bloodstream and travel directly into our organs.\nhttps://t.co/NoC70dLakV
— (@)

“Micro and nanoplastics have been found in the human placenta at this point. They’ve been found in human lung tissues. They’ve been found in human feces; they’ve been found in human blood,” study coauthor Phoebe Stapleton, associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Rutgers University’s Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy told CNN Health,

We know that nanoplastics are making their way into our bodies. We just don't have enough research yet on what that means for our health, and we still have more questions than answers. How many nanoplastics does it take to do damage and/or cause disease? What kinds of damage or disease might they cause? Is whatever effect they might have cumulative? We simply don't have answers to these questions yet.

That's not to say there's no cause for concern. We do know that certain levels of microplastic exposure have been shown to adversely affect the viability of cells. Nanoplastics are even smaller—does that mean they are more likely to cause cellular damage? Science is still working that out.

According to Dr. Sara Benedé of the Spanish National Research Council’s Institute of Food Science Research, it's not just the plastics themselves that might cause damage, but what they may bring along with them. “[Microparticles and nanoparticles] have the ability to bind all kinds of compounds when they come into contact with fluids, thus acting as carriers of all kinds of substances including environmental pollutants, toxins, antibiotics, or microorganisms,” Dr. Benedé told Medical News Today.

Where is this plastic in water coming from? This study focused on bottled water, which is almost always packaged in plastic. The filters used to filter the water before bottling are also frequently made from plastic.

Is it possible that some of these nanoplastics were already present in the water from their original sources? Again, research is always evolving on this front, but microplastics have been detected in lakes, streams and other freshwater sources, so it's not a big stretch to imagine that nanoplastics may be making their way into freshwater ecosystems as well. However, microplastics are found at much higher levels in bottled water than tap water, so it's also not a stretch to assume that most of the nanoplastics are likely coming from the bottling process and packaging rather than from freshwater sources.

The reality is, though, we simply don't know yet.

“Based on other studies we expected most of the microplastics in bottled water would come from leakage of the plastic bottle itself, which is typically made of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic,” lead author Naixin Qian, a doctoral student in chemistry at Columbia University, told CNN Health. “However, we found there’s actually many diverse types of plastics in a bottle of water, and that different plastic types have different size distributions. The PET particles were larger, while others were down to 200 nanometers, which is much, much smaller.”

We need to drink water, and we need to drink safe water. At this point, we have plenty of environmental reasons for avoiding bottled water unless absolutely necessary and opting for tap water instead. Even if there's still more research to be done, the presence of hundreds of thousands of nanoplastics in bottled water might just be another reason to make the switch.

This article originally appeared on 2.2.24

From Your Site Articles

water

Science

See what researchers found when they tested a bottle of Fiji Water against a glass of tap water.

Is bottled water REALLY all that bad?

via Free Stock Photos

A young woman drinking bottled water outdoors before exercising.

The Story of Bottled Waterwww.youtube.com

Here are six facts from the video above by The Story of Stuff Project that I'll definitely remember next time I'm tempted to buy bottled water.

1. Bottled water is more expensive than tap water (and not just a little).

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

A Business Insider column noted that two-thirds of the bottled water sold in the United States is in individual 16.9-ounce bottles, which comes out to roughly $7.50 per gallon. That's about 2,000 times higher than the cost of a gallon of tap water.

And in an article in 20 Something Finance, G.E. Miller investigated the cost of bottled versus tap water for himself. He found that he could fill 4,787 20-ounce bottles with tap water for only $2.10! So if he paid $1 for a bottled water, he'd be paying 2,279 times the cost of tap.

2. Bottled water could potentially be of lower quality than tap water.

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

Fiji Water ran an ad campaign that was pretty disparaging about the city of Cleveland. Not a wise move. The city ordered a test of the snooty brand's water and found that Fiji Water contained levels of arsenic that weren't seen in the city's water supply.

How was that possible? Sarah Goodman of the New York Times explains:

" Bottled water manufacturers are not required to disclose as much information as municipal water utilities because of gaps in federal oversight authority. Bottom line: The Food and Drug Administration oversees bottled water, and U.S. EPA is in charge of tap water. FDA lacks the regulatory authority of EPA."

3. The amount of bottled water we buy every week in the U.S. alone could circle the globe five times!

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

That sounded like it just had to be impossible, so we looked into it. Here's what our fact-checkers found:

"According to the video, ' People in the U.S. buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week.' National Geographic says for 2011, bottled water sales hit 9.1 billion gallons (roughly 34 billion liters).

A 'typical' water bottle is a half-liter, so that's about 68 billion bottles per year. Divided by 52 weeks would be a little over 1 billion bottles of water sold per week in the U.S. Because that's based on a smaller 'typical' bottle size, it seems reasonable that a half billion bottles a week could be accurate.

The Earth is about 131.5 million feet around, so yep, half a billion bottles of varying sizes strung end-to-end could circle the Earth five times."

4. Paying for bottled water makes us chumps.

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

Beverage companies have turned bottled water into a multibillion-dollar industry through a concept known as manufactured demand. Bottled water advertisements used a combination of scare tactics (Tap water bad!) and seduction (From the purest mountain streams EVER!) to reel us in.

Well, we now know their claims about the superior quality of bottled water are mostly bogus. And research shows that anywhere from a quarter to 45% of all bottled water comes from the exact same place as your tap water (which, to reiterate, is so cheap it's almost free).

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

5. Bottled water is FILTHY.

It takes oil — lots of it — to make plastic bottles. According to the video, the energy in the amount of oil it takes to make the plastic water bottles sold in the U.S. in one year could fuel a million cars. That's not even counting the oil it takes to ship bottled water around the world.

And once we've guzzled our bottled water, up to 80% of the empty bottles end up in landfills or noxious-gas-producing incinerators. The rest is either recycled or shipped to countries like India where poor people without environmental and labor protections have to deal with it.

On top of all that, the process of manufacturing plastic bottles is polluting public water supplies, which makes it easier for bottled water companies to sell us their expensive product.

6. There are 750 million people around the world who don't have access to clean water.

Photo by H2O for Life.

A child dies every minute from a waterborne disease. And for me, that's the core of what makes bottled water so evil.

The video wraps by comparing buying bottled water to smoking while pregnant. That may sound extreme, but after learning everything I just did about the bottled water industry, I can't disagree.

via The Story of Stuff Project/YouTube

If you're properly disgusted, here are a few ways you can help destroy the bottled water industry:

Don't buy bottled water. Get a reusable water bottle. The savings will add up.
Rally your schools, workplaces, and communities to ban bottled water.
Demand that your city, state, and federal governments invest in better water infrastructure.

This article originally appeared on 5.7.15

From Your Site Articles

water

Science

Amazing WaterCube invention can create up to 100 gallons of water a day out of thin air

Say goodbye to your water bills.

via Genesis Systems and Karolina Grabowska/Pexels

Genesis Systems' WaterCube.

A seriously impressive piece of technology grabbed a lot of attention at this year's CES trade show convention in Las Vegas, Genesis Systems’ WaterCube. It’s a home and office appliance that’s about the size of an A/C unit and can produce up to 100 gallons of water daily from thin air. That’s the amount of water used by a typical family of 4.

The amount of water it can produce depends on the humidity levels, but Genesis Systems says it can even create water in dry environments.

Much like solar panels provide energy independence, this does the same for water.

"Our first mission is to sustainably solve global water scarcity," said David Stuckenberg, who founded Genesis with his wife, Shannon, told Techxplore. "Once you have this plugged into your house...you can turn yourself off (from) the city water."

"One of the challenges that we're facing, in terms of making humanity sustainable, is the stuff we need for life," he said, according to Techxplore. "Next to air, water is the most important thing."

— (@)

The WC-100 WaterCube stands more than 3 feet tall, weighs close to 600 pounds and will cost around $20,000 to pre-order. So, even though you may not have a water bill anymore, you will have a pretty expensive monthly payment plan on a WaterCube for a few years.

But once it’s paid off, your water is free as long as you own the appliance.

Genesis Systems believes that the WaterCube creates “an infinite water source” that is “democratizing the water supply.”

From Your Site Articles

water

Heroes

Scientist exposes the dark, sparkly secret behind glitter

"All glitter should be banned."

Photo by Didssph on Unsplash

such a beautful planet killer.

It's fun to make glittery holiday cards with the kids. Or without the kids. I don't know. Don't judge me.

But if you've ever worked with glitter, you know cleanup can be a mess. If it gets on your hands, it can take ages (or some fancy tricks) to wash it all off.

But once it's finally off your hands, where does that glitter go? Down the drain, probably. And some scientists aren't very happy about that.

Not very happy about that at all.

"I think all glitter should be banned," Trisia Farrelly of New Zealand's Massey University told CBS.

The problem? "It's microplastic," says Farrelly.

"Microplastic" is the name for the tiny, virtually indestructible pieces of plastic pollution that often find their way into our lakes, oceans, and even our drinking water.

And once they get into the water supply, they can choke or poison sea life. Even tiny plankton have been found nibbling on them.

glitter, biodegradable, fun, shiny, responsibility

Besides arts and crafts, glitter is also found in many cosmetics, such as nail polish or shampoos.

Photo from Pixabay

Glitter isn't the only source of microplastics. The majority come from larger plastic objects breaking down into smaller pieces. They can also come from the microbeads found in many body washes and shampoos. In fact, the United States has a partial ban on microbeads — manufacturers were supposed to stop putting them in rinse-off cosmetics.

Now that microbeads are getting the boot, it makes sense that people are giving glitter some side-eye. A handful of nurseries in the United Kingdom have already made the stuff verboten.

The good news is that if your heart is really set on that shimmery holiday card or looking fierce on New Year's, there are already non-micro-plasticky options open to you. Yes, biodegradable glitter is a thing.

Listen, glitter is amazing. No one is denying that. But with great shiny power, comes great shiny responsibility. Sparkle safely.

This article originally appeared on 12.01.17

From Your Site Articles

science

Well Being

This surf rescuer's lesson on how to spot a rip current could literally save your life

Kenny Jewell/Facebook

Our family is heading to the Oregon Coast next month, not far from where an 11-year-old girl died just weeks ago after being pulled out to sea. According to NOAA, thousands of people are rescued from rip currents by lifeguards and around 100 people are killed in them each year. While we're looking forward to our vacation and don't anticipate tragedy, we also want to make sure our kids know the potential dangers of the ocean.

Rip currents can happen in any large body of water that has waves—not just the ocean, but lakes as well. They are sneaky and dangerous, but they can be avoided if you know what to look for before heading toward the water.

Former surf lifesaver Kenny Jewell shared a helpful post on Facebook several years back that contains timeless advice and clear visuals to help families avoid tragedy at the beach. He wrote:

"As a former surf lifesaver I constantly find myself when I'm at a beach automatically in patrol mode, and I'm always troubled seeing the amount of people that enter the surf straight into a rip zone. This includes, and most worrying of all children. I know a lot of people are kind of aware of what to do if caught in a rip, but it has been brought to my attention recently that a lot of people aren't aware of what a rip actually looks like or where the safest place to swim at the beach is if there is no flagged area.

One person will drown every two to three days this summer... 90% of those fatalities will be rip-related. Here are a few things that will help you and your kids stay safe this summer. I have also put together a few images that show what to look for.

1. The easiest thing to remember is that often the safest/calmest most enticing-looking area along a beach is usually a rip. A rip is usually the area devoid of wave activity and appears darker and deceptively calmer. It can sometimes appear milky or turbulent, but it is always pretty much void of wave activity. All that water coming in via waves has to go back out somehow, this is what a rip is. (see pics).

2. Always take 5-10 mins when you get to the beach to observe surf conditions and identify where these areas are.

3. If you are caught in a rip, DO NOT PANIC. Go into floating mode and raise one arm as a distress signal when possible. See which direction the rip is taking you, is it straight out or at an angle? Once you have determined this, and if you have the energy, swim to the right or left of the direction of flow, never against. Some rips can move at 3 times the speed of an Olympic swimmer, you won't win! If you cannot swim out to either side of the rip, just go with it. Most rips won't take you out very far, and will usually spit you out not long after they take you, so keep calm and save your energy for the swim back to shore.

4. If you have kids, show them these pictures, educate them and make them aware. You can't always be watching them, and it is only a matter of a few meters each way of the point of entry to the water that could mean them being safe, or instantly caught in a rip.

Obviously the safest place to swim is always between the flags on a patrolled beach, but this isn't always practical given the immensity of our coast line and number of beautiful beaches. Of course there are many other factors that can come into play when it comes to beach safety, but rips are the No.1 killer. They are not hard to identify, and 10 mins observation before entering the surf is much easier than body retrieval.

*The darker/calmer areas in the pics are rips. The one with purple dye shows rip movement."

The key thing that struck me in these photos is that I or my kids might have chosen those breaks in the waves as calm places to hang out in the water. I would never have guessed that a break in the waves could mean a potentially dangerous current. It looks inviting, not scary. Such good information to know.

Knowing how to escape a rip current is also vital information. That "swim parallel to shore" advice we often hear makes more sense when you see how these currents actually work.

This video from the NOAA is also helpful offering more visuals and showing what rip currents look like in action:

Rip Current Sciencewww.youtube.com

Have fun at the beach this summer, but be safe. And definitely share this information with your kids or others who might be drawn toward the calmer-looking waters. It could literally save a life.

From Your Site Articles

There's a big, salty lake on Mars! Yeah, that's huge. Here's what we know.

Holy cow, there's water on Mars!

An artist's rendition of the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiting the Red Planet. Photo by AFP/Getty Images.

This is not a drill, Earthlings. It looks like our celestial neighbor has a big 'ol lake on it.

— (@)

Er, maybe I should say, a big 'ol lake in it.

Italian scientists claim they've detected a large body of liquid — spanning about 12.5 miles across — submerged roughly a mile beneath a layer of rock and ice on the planet's south pole.

"Whoa" is right.

This isn't the lake! But this pic, taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express, does show a Martian river valley where water likely once flowed — a long, long time ago. Photo by ESA/AFP/Getty Images.

These brainy folks spent the last two years sorting through data collected from the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft. Liquid H2O is the only feasible answer to what their radar's seeing.

As Roberto Orosei from the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics put it, "I really have no other explanation."

It must be water.

— (@)

They're not exactly sure how deep the lake is.

But from what they can gather, the water isn't "some kind of meltwater filling some space between rock and ice, as happens in certain glaciers on Earth," according to Orosei, lead author of the study that produced the findings. It's a legit body of water.

Even though scientists know the lake is frigid cold — certainly well below freezing — its super salty consistency has likely lowered the melting point so that the water stays in liquid form.

Scientists have long suspected Mars was once a whole lot wetter than it is today.

Given that the planet's rocky, freeze-dried surface is scarred from what appears to be waterways from billions of years ago, scientists have gathered the Red Planet was once a lot more blue.

Mars' surface is one dry place these days. Photo by ESA via Getty Images.

But liquid water is the key to life as we know it. So if it's still on Mars ... well, you can put two and two together.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves!

These findings certainly don't prove Martians are paddle-boarding around their planet's south pole.

"We are not closer to actually detecting life," Dr. Manish Patel of the Open University told BBC News. "But what this finding does is give us the location of where to look [for potential life] on Mars."

"It is like a treasure map," Patel concluded. "Except in this case, there will be lots of 'X's marking the spots."

Let's get to searching, Earthlings.

water

Most pregnant women know what they need to bring to the hospital. Doris' list had something extra.

For Doris, the list was very different.

Bathrobe. Socks. Insurance card. Snacks.

For Doris, that list included water.

Lack of access to clean water in Tanzania is a very big deal.

Scientists tested 3 popular bottled water brands for nanoplastics using new tech, and yikes

The results were alarming—an average of 240,000 nanoplastics per 1 liter bottle—but what does it mean for our health?

See what researchers found when they tested a bottle of Fiji Water against a glass of tap water.

Is bottled water REALLY all that bad?

1. Bottled water is more expensive than tap water (and not just a little).

2. Bottled water could potentially be of lower quality than tap water.

3. The amount of bottled water we buy every week in the U.S. alone could circle the globe five times!

4. Paying for bottled water makes us chumps.

5. Bottled water is FILTHY.

6. There are 750 million people around the world who don't have access to clean water.

If you're properly disgusted, here are a few ways you can help destroy the bottled water industry:

Amazing WaterCube invention can create up to 100 gallons of water a day out of thin air

Say goodbye to your water bills.

Scientist exposes the dark, sparkly secret behind glitter

"All glitter should be banned."

This surf rescuer's lesson on how to spot a rip current could literally save your life

There's a big, salty lake on Mars! Yeah, that's huge. Here's what we know.

Holy cow, there's water on Mars!

This is not a drill, Earthlings. It looks like our celestial neighbor has a big 'ol lake on it.

Scientists have long suspected Mars was once a whole lot wetter than it is today.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves!

Two brothers Irish stepdancing to Beyoncé's country hit 'Texas Hold 'Em' is pure delight

Can't comprehend the 4th dimension? Carl Sagan explains it with an apple in this classic clip.

12 books that people say are life-changing reads

Forensics student reveals the two types of women predators target based on how they walk

Woman shares the unique way a man hit on her that made her feel both desired and safe

'Britain's Got Talent' contestant blew Simon Cowell away singing a song he 'hates'