Sea Water and Desalination
Water on our planet seems plentiful with about 80% of the world being covered by water or ice. However, with all this water, only about 1% is fresh and calculated to be suitable for human needs. The remainder consists of 97% salt and 2% ice.
Although the human body has a bloodstream which closely resembles sea water, its fine balance is totally upset if one was to drink salt water. The only example of a positive purpose in salt water drinking is represented by a purification ritual of some indigenous people. Pacific Islanders, for instance, engage in annual cleansing rituals that include bathing in the sea and drinking sea water to cleanse the system.
Certainly drinking sea water is not advocated by any health professionals. We are all aware of the tragic results of seafarers’ desperate attempts to survive by drinking it.
Australia is the earth’s driest continent. It has the lowest average rainfall of any inhabited continent and the lowest water runoff. So we are very aware of possibility of water shortage in the future.
Until we have a successful means of taking the salt out of seawater, by desalination techniques that are practical, we could face a situation that threatens the availability of fresh water for heavily populated urban areas. As our continent’s major cities are close to the oceans, desalination would be an attractive option that offers the best chance for us to avoid reliance upon rainfall and changing weather patterns.
Desalination on a grand scale would provide a quality, healthy water supply for all our needs and purposes in the coming era. We would not be required to compromise quality by having to drink water sourced from recycled water, sewage and hospital wastes.
Because of the poor quality of many of the existent public water supplies now being tainted because of chemical additives such as chlorine and fluoride, many of us choose to rely upon rainwater and domestic filter systems.
We are left dismayed in our realization that there is now little pure water and pristine streams accessible to us on our earth. With this realization we also know that with the threat to the quality of this vital element, which comprises over 70% of our body structure, it will be more and more difficult to anticipate perfectly healthy bodies in the future.
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