title: Water pollution and health.
abstract: Water is the important constituent of life support system. No one can live and even dream to live without water. Most of our water bodies have become polluted due to industrial growth; urbanization and man-made problems mainly the result of population growth. Poor sanitation and contaminated drinking water arising from human activity and natural phenomena create serious problems in human health. The chief sources of water pollution are sewage and other waste, industrial effluents, agricultural discharges and industrial wastes from chemical industries, fossils fuel plants and nuclear power plants. They create a larger problem of water pollution rendering water no longer fit for drinking, agriculture and, as well as for aquatic life. More than 2.6 billion people--40% of the world's population--lack basic sanitation facilities and over one billion people still use unsafe drinking water sources. As a result thousands of children die everyday from diarrhoea and other water, sanitation and hygiene-related diseases and many suffer and are weakened by illness.
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Kathmandu Medical College, Sinamangal, Nepal.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pandey
mesh_terms: D006262:Health; D006801:Humans; D012499:Sanitation; D014876:Water Pollution