Abigail Roesser
AP Biology
Current Event
I
read the article, “Plenty of Water, but Little to Drink” by Cornelia Dean in
the New York Times. The article is about how even though most of Earth’s
surface is covered with water only 5% of it is fresh water, which is mostly
tied up in sheets that we cannot reach because they are so far underground.
Then the author proceeds to discuss how this causes us to draw more water from
underground aquifers fasters than the aquifers
can refill. Aquifers are a body of permeable rock
that can contain or transmit groundwater. The problem with the small amount of
water that we do have is often polluted by sewage, industrial waste, and
parasites, which makes natural water under the ground unsafe to drink. The
author backs this information up by including information from James Salzman’s
book “Drinking Water” where Salzman discusses how 1 in 70 Americans due of a
waterborne diseases before the age of 70. The author also includes information
about how water is critical to economic, social, and cultural development for thousands
of years. She provides support for this by saying, “Steven Mithen tells
us in “Thirst.” An archaeologist at the University of Reading in England, Dr.
Mithen covers a vast portion of the ancient world: water storage in ancient
Sumeria, the terra cotta pipes of classical Athens and the aqueducts of Rome,
the “hydraulic city” of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the water-allocation policies
of the Maya.”
This
article is very important to our society today because clean water access has
been an issue for many other countries. For example, in many countries
thousands of people don’t have access to clean water and that causes them to
die from drinking dirty water filled with parasites and diseases. This article
draws attention to a large issues that is growing as the population grows and
hopefully will lead people to help solve the problem. One thing that we can do
to prevent this problem is to come up with new technologies of cleaning water
or conserving more water.
I really
enjoyed reading this article because the author made it very clear and detailed
of the issues of water. The article was really good about giving background
information on the issue. And I also like how the author included information
from books and other scientists. However, I thought that the article could have
discussed some more solutions for the issue rather than discuss the problem. Overall,
I thought that the article was very informative.
Overall Abigail did a great job reviewing this article. She did a very good job organizing this review. Her organization made the review very easy to understand and optimized the effectiveness of her summary. She also did a very good job defining terms so that you could understand better what the article was talking about. A good example of this is when she defined the term “aquifers”, which is not a commonly used term. A third thing that I think she did particularly well was her use of logos. She included data from noted archaeologists and published books that showed her information and the article had credibility.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I think Abigail did a great job there are a few things I think she could have improved upon. I think it would have been helpful if she included more ways that we could improve this water issue, or she could convey this problem with more urgency to show the importance of combating this problem. Also, it would be interesting if she included how sewage, industrial waste, and parasites get into the water. Overall, she did a very good job.
I was very impressed by the connection she included to the importance of water on the economic, social and cultural development of countries. It was interesting to think about how water has affected our development instead of just focusing on the problems now.
I read Abigail’s review of the article, “Plenty of Water, but Little to Drink” by Cornelia Dean. Abigail did a good job of explaining that the problem of having enough freshwater to drink is being worsened by overuse of our aquifers. Aquifers are the supply of freshwater that is in porous rock underground, and when they are overdrawn they take a long time to refill, during which we don’t have access to as much or any water. I also liked that she included statistics, like that 5% of the world’s water is freshwater, and most of that is unreachable, as well as the face that 1 in 70 Americans die before they turn 70 as a result of water-borne diseases. These facts gave me a better understanding of the scope of our problem of lacking clean, accessible water. Abigail also did a great job explaining how water we should have access to, geographically speaking, increasingly is polluted by the byproducts of industrialization: sewage and industrial waste, and by parasites. This is important to note as if we identify the sources of pollution, it is possible to start top clean it up. This also relates to the expensive cost of cleaning water that has been polluted, rather than just basic purification of non-polluted water.
ReplyDeleteAbigail could have made the review more interesting by including more details about the historical logistics of water storage and movement through civilizations. She mentions this in Sumeria, Athens, and Rome, but could have gone into more depth on each. It also would have been nice if she had given examples of the new technology she recommends we create to clean and conserve water, or mentioned what regulations and technology we have now.
I already knew a lot about the global water problem, as I’ve researched the topic in my environmental class last year, but I didn’t know the fact that 1 in 70 Americans will die by age 70 because of water borne disease and that shocked me. I think that this statistic deserves national recognition because many Americans do not realize we have issues with the purification and conservation of water so close to home.
Abigail summarized the article, “Plenty of Water, but Little to Drink” well. She clearly stated the main idea of the article, by writing, “…even though most of Earth’s surface is covered with water only 5% of it is fresh water, which is mostly tied up in sheets that we cannot reach because they are so far underground.” In addition, it is evident that Abigail wanted the reader of the review to understand the article, which is shown when she defines aquifers as bodies of permeable rock that can contain or transmit groundwater. Lastly, she does a good job connecting the article to life, by noting that people can die from drinking water filled with diseases or parasites. Also, she includes that by inventing new technologies or simply conserving water, humans can prevent the issue of not having access to fresh drinking water.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Abigail reviewed the article well, it still could have been improved. First, she could have elaborated on what technologies could possibly help conserve water. Furthermore, she could have included more details about how the diseases and parasites are found in water.
Abigail chose an informative article to review. Overall, she did a great job reviewing the article. From the article as well as from Abigail’s review, I learned that as recently as 1900, 1 in 70 Americans have died of a waterborne disease before reaching the age of 70.