In the present scenario of Coronavirus pandemic worldwide, it is advised to wash hands frequently with soap and water and also for at least 20 seconds. But when 2.2 billions of people in the world are not getting safe drinking water, has anyone thought of the wastage of water in regular hand-wash by millions and millions?
A proper hand-wash involves lathering soap and scrubbing hands on both sides for at least 20 seconds, according to WHO guidelines to resist the virus from spreading. A 30 to 40 second hand wash would use up around four litres of water if the tap is on, or two litres with the tap closed, while scrubbing with soap.
A family of five members would thus need 100 to 200 litres of water per day only to wash hands 10 times a day than 4-5 times as usual.
"But for the 2.2 billion people in the world who lack safe drinking water — mostly in low- and middle-income countries — that advice will be difficult to heed. A running tap uses 6 litres of water per minute. One gallon contains roughly 3,785 ml, so that's 15,140 drips per gallon, which means our 1-second-dripping faucet wastes over 5 gallons of water per day and just under 2,083 gallons per year," said environmentalist Dr Manas Ranjan Senapati, who is presently Dean Science of Biju Patnaik University of Technology and Professor of Chemistry in Trident Academy of Technology, Bhubaneswar.
He cautioned that the earth would be overburdened with waste water because of frequent hand washing which will be another challenge.
The Government and policy makers should take a note of this as a future environmental concern, he added.
Different measures are to be taken like setting up a network of public hand-washing stations – something done in West Africa during the Ebola outbreak of 2014, he opined.a