U.S. Water News Online (www.uswaternews.com) reports that Gordon Young, coordinator of the Paris-based U.N. World Water Assess-ment Program, warned that crises ranging from contaminated drinking water to polluted rivers and ground water reserves threaten the lives of tens of thousands of people every single day.
According to U.N. statistics, more than 200 million people every year suffer from water-related diseases and about 2.2 million of them – mostly the poor – die. About 20 percent of the earth's population of 6 billion currently lacks access to safe drinking water.