Today, there are 2 billion people who don’t have access to clean drinking water, and things are projected to only get worse in the coming years. In a bit of environmental irony, there will also be more water in the oceans due to the melting of polar glaciers. You might be wondering, What stops us from just turning all that into drinking water? Well, we know drinking seawater is bad, but do you know why it’s bad? TED Ed and Dr. Manish Kumar put together an insightful animated video explaining what happens if you drink seawater, what it takes to turn it into freshwater, and how to stay hydrated in a desperate situation—like being in the middle of the ocean.
Kumar points out that seawater is four times saltier than your blood. When it’s ingested, the fluid outside your cells becomes much saltier, prompting your body to fix the balance. Since freshwater is needed to make up for the amount of salt, it squeezes it out of your cells. Your kidneys go into overdrive too, working hard to remove the excess salt with the little freshwater available in your body. That’s why consuming lots of seawater without some freshwater to counter it can lead to salt poisoning.
As cells lose water and contract, tissues can rupture and vital organs—such as the stomach, brain, and liver—start collecting fluids. In simpler terms, drinking saltwater puts you in a lot more danger. Also, drinking urine isn’t ideal either, as it can cause kidney damage after a few days. And if you’re ever in that situation, you should refrain from eating too, since your body wouldn’t have enough water to digest the food. You could, instead, drink the blood of birds and turtles. It may not sound appealing, but you can take a look at the story of a Peruvian fisherman named Maximo Napa Castro who survived 95 days lost at sea by doing this.
Desalination has concerned scientists for millennia—the TED Ed video lists Aristotle’s methods, such as heating and reverse osmosis. The latter may hold the secret for a more sustainable and effective desalination in our time, as the thermal methods require a lot of energy, which means relying on fossil fuels. If a cheap, scalable method of reverse osmosis ever came along, it would not just be saltwater we could turn into clean liquid, but also wastewater. Ultimately, these facts should be a reminder of how precious water is, and what’s at stake if we don’t take better care of it.
TED Ed put together an insightful animated video explaining what happens to your body if you drink seawater.
Check out the explanation in the video below.
Sources: Why don’t we get our drinking water from the ocean? – Manish Kumar; Manish Kumar – Distinguished Professor in Water Science; Billions of people lack access to clean drinking water, U.N. report finds; Fisherman rescued after 95 days adrift eating turtles
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