Warning! This Water May Be Hazardous to Your Health

CAN you imagine turning on the water tap at your kitchen sink, holding a lighted match to the faucet, and witnessing a horrifying eruption of flames? Can you imagine a freshwater river that bursts into flames at the drop of a lighted cigarette? Would you be appalled if your bathwater was too thick to drink but too thin to plow and piling up in one end?

Does it boggle the mind to think of river water that can develop a picture from a negative before your eyes? What would be your reaction if your tap water came out with a head on it, looking like bock beer? Do you have to open the window at your sink so as not to stink up the house when water is drawn from the faucet? Does your marriage mate leave the morning pot of coffee untouched because of its unusual strength, only to discover later that no coffee had been added yet?

Or is your water crystal clear, pure in taste, but your family repeatedly suffers from headaches, dizziness, dysentery, or skin rashes after drinking it? Or would the suffering of tremors, blindness, and impairment of the central nervous system best describe the symptoms?

Did you know that not long ago one third of humanity was in a perpetual state of illness because of impure water and that ten million people were dying each year, not for the lack of it, but because of it? Can all of this be the figment of a wild imagination​—the stuff of science-fiction movies? Unfortunately, the scenarios are true.

It has become obvious that man today has the awesome genius to poison completely every living thing on the face of the earth and in the waters below. Most of this has come about through his efforts to make life easier​—mitigating pain and disease, bringing the world closer to his living room through communication, pursuing his quest into outer space, and making destructive implements of war.

Most of this is caused by man’s creation of new but deadly chemical compounds. Six years ago, over 60,000 such chemical concoctions were on the market​—35,000 of which were classified as either deadly or extremely hazardous to our health, with thousands more being formulated each year. From these chemical cocktails have come equally dangerous and highly toxic wastes that are disposed of by dumping them into the earth, rivers, and streams, with little thought of the consequences it would have on people or environment.

A Boon to Farmers, a Bomb to Earth’s Waters

Pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers have been a boon to the world’s farmers, but they have been a bomb to earth’s waters. For years farmers in California’s San Joaquin Valley sprayed their grapes, fruit, and tomatoes with the pesticide DBCP, only to discover in recent years that it can cause cancer and sterility in humans. Although the spraying has stopped, the poison hasn’t stopped percolating through the layers of the earth and into the underground water system. “Thirty-five percent of the wells in the valley have DBCP,” said a spokesman for the health department. In one county in California, 250,000 people run the risk of DBCP contamination, reported Newsweek magazine. Other pesticides affect the nervous system. Still others are suspected of causing various other illnesses. Some herbicides have been discovered to have serious effects on the brain, rendering the victim immobile. In many agricultural areas, fertilizers have raised nitrate concentrations above health standards set out in some countries. These chemicals, too, have infiltrated aquifers.

Detergents, solvents, dry-cleaning fluids, septic-tank cleaners, to mention a few, have been highly developed through chemistry’s progression. The result has been marvelous benefits to mankind. However, as these products percolate through the earth, the result has been a contamination of earth’s pure waters for generations to come. “We are poisoning ourselves and our posterity,” said one environmentalist.

Many of the millions of underground gasoline storage tanks at the service stations dotting the highways and city streets leak, as reports show, and their highly explosive contents seep into the ground and percolate through the well-water systems. They can cause houses and barns to burst into flames when the fumes reach a lighted match. Flames from a water faucet are all too common as a result of this underground witches’ brew of death-dealing chemicals oozing into the water system.

It was thought that the earth itself would purify these chemicals as they trickled through the layers of the earth, rendering them harmless. In the past decade, however, it has been discovered that many of these dangerous chemicals have not been filtered out but go right through to the aquifers, contaminating them for generations to come. “Ground-water contamination is the result of sins committed a long time ago,” said James Groff of the American Water Works Association. “Nobody had the foresight to predict it.”

The sins, however, continue to be committed to this date. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that in the United States alone 1.5 trillion gallons of hazardous waste leak into the underground water system each year.a Much of it is deliberately dumped by unscrupulous and greedy men without regard to the terrible, terrible damage to man’s water and health. “Just 1 gallon of solvent will contaminate 20 million gallons of ground water to exceed safe levels set by most states,” said one scientist. When one thinks in terms of a trillion gallons of waste, then the expression, ‘water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink,’ looms up as being a potentially frightful reality.

A “Time Bomb, Slowly Ticking Away”

“Ground water and its contaminants,” said the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Environment, Energy and Natural Resources, “represent a potential time bomb, slowly ticking away. There’s a growing belief that this problem will be the next great crisis of the 1980s.” The New York Times reported: “There is wide agreement, however, that the contamination of ground water is by far the most serious and difficult problem affecting the quality of drinking water and now constitutes a subterranean time bomb.” “There’s no doubt we have a time bomb on our hands,” warned a University of Arizona scientist. “The question is how big the bang will be.”

A person does not have to put his ear to the ground to know “how big the bang will be.” Already the world shudders in fear of the coming explosion. For example, it has been estimated that by the year 2000 a fourth of the world’s water supply could be unsafe for drinking.

A third of the water in China’s major rivers is polluted beyond safe limits for human consumption, said Worldwatch Institute. According to Thane Gustafson, a specialist on Soviet Union affairs, that country will face a greater demand for water by the year 2000 than its waters can supply because of water pollution today. South America faces a similar crisis​—a water supply too contaminated for its people to drink. “Either we manage to limit the waste of water or by the year 2000 we shall be dying of thirst,” proclaimed the United Nations World Conference on water. “Without being guilty of exaggeration it is easy to foresee that in the very near future the world will be literally dying of thirst, either as a result of pollution or present wasteful usage,” the conference said.

People in all parts of the earth experience the devastating effects of the time bomb that appears to have exploded on the world scene already. When one considers, for example, that 70 percent of India’s drinking water is polluted and is the cause of much of the country’s illness, it becomes no exaggeration to say that its waters and all life dependent on them cry out for a cure. And what can be said of the Third World countries and the dying people looking for clean water? Truly, the world faces a dilemma of unprecedented proportions.

Water-borne diseases kill 30,000 people every day, said Swiss water-treatment expert Dr. Maarten Schalekamp. Only a third of mankind possesses what he called “irreproachable” drinking-water facilities, while another third of earth’s inhabitants is drinking contaminated water. The remaining third has very little water of any kind.

And so it goes. Poisoned waters percolating through the earth, rushing through its rivers, meandering down its streams, cascading over its falls, while a great portion of mankind inevitably drinks to its death. Truly, a time bomb of man’s own making!

Jehovah God, the Creator of earth, man, and all life-giving waters, has set ticking his own time bomb by which he will “bring to ruin those ruining the earth.” (Revelation 11:18) It is set to go off at his appointed time, and those who have ruined the earth, the air, and the water will not be able to defuse it or to escape its destructive forces. The year 2000 continues to be pointed to by man as being a critical time. Whether the guilty live to see that feared year remains to be seen. Only Jehovah knows. Following the destruction of those whom God now holds accountable, the earth will be restored to a paradise, and rivers of waters of life, clean and pure, will be abundant for every living thing.

Then of fresh water it may be said, ‘Water, water everywhere​—and every drop fit to drink.’

[Footnotes]

[Blurb on page 10]

‘Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink,’ looms up today with new and ominous meaning for mankind

[Picture on page 9]

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HERBICIDES

DBCP

DETERGENTS

SOLVENTS

FERTILIZERS

PESTICIDES