Nov 8, 2017 4 min read

A “First World problem” is defined as “a relatively trivial or minor problem or frustration, implying a contrast with serious problems, such as those that may be experienced in the developing world.”

The reality that Washington County residents, along with thousands in South Hills communities like Bethel Park and Upper St. Clair, have been advised to boil their water since Monday night, and will likely have to do continue doing so until at least Wednesday afternoon, is undoubtedly inconvenient. It’s been bothersome to parents who have needed to find alternative child-care arrangements due to closed schools in some locations, and it’s demanded a gear-shift in our everyday reflexes – when we turn on the tap, we expect the water that comes pouring out to be clean and potable.

Still, the fact remains that, in the scheme of things, this has been a hassle, but far from a catastrophe. Soon enough, we’ll all be able to turn on the taps again, water will flow out, and life will go on.

That’s not the case for all too many people elsewhere.

There is, of course, the ongoing saga of Flint, Mich.’s woes, with its water supply having been contaminated by high levels of lead. Then there’s the continuing plight of our fellow American citizens in Puerto Rico, where 1 million of its residents still do not have reliable drinking water in their homes more than a month after Hurricane Maria tore across the island. The U.S.’s aging infrastructure has raised concerns about water safety, as well as the impact on our water by farm pollution and industrial dumping. Clean water is something that we take for granted, but it doesn’t come with guarantees and demands vigilance and investments.

In the meantime, outside the industrialized First World, where we have the luxury of railing about having to use bottled water to brush our teeth for a few days, there are many places where the advances that have long been integrated into our lives have yet to arrive. The people who live in these locales have to find water in the same way our ancestors did in the 1700s or 1800s, and have to contend with water-borne diseases that have largely evaporated into the past in the First World.

The charitable organization Water Aid, which is dedicated to improving sanitation, hygiene and access to water, has compiled an eye-opening set of statistics. First and foremost is that 844 million people around the world do not have access to clean water. To put this in perspective, if you took the combined populations of the United States and Canada, and then doubled that number, you still would not reach 844 million. That’s one in 10 of all the people in the world. On top of that, 2.3 billion people do not have access to a decent toilet, and 289,000 children under the age of 5 die each year due to diseases resulting from poor water and sanitation. This works out to 800 children per day.

According to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, 42 percent of the health care facilities in Africa do not have access to safe water, and in some places people have to walk for at least 30 minutes to collect drinking water and return to their homes. Droughts as a result of climate change could make the situation even more dire.

So, when Washington County and South Hills water customers are told that they don’t need to boil their H20 before drinking and cooking, they should be glad. And remember that a lot of people in the world don’t have that same luxury.