Is it true you can't drink any water that someone else in history hasn't drank first?

Question

I remember a biology instructor who told my class back in the '80s that there is a finite amount of water on Earth. Anything you drink has already been drank (and eliminated) by someone else. But I have yet to find any evidence to support this. (I used to tell my ex-wife this every time she drank a glass of water). I've learned that water in the universe is probably made by exploding stars, but is Earth's water replenished?

Answer 1

what the teacher meant was thAT WE LIVE IN A CLOSED SYSTEM
like a bottle ,not a drop of water is added to the planet from elsewhere and not a driop leaves it

the only thing that changes is the location and ususally the form it takes ,
it could be ice that becomes rain that becomes rivers than a lake ,you drink it have a pee ,it goes to the plants ,
the plant absorbs it, now its a leaf ,the cow eats the leaf ,now it becomes meat etc ,
water in endless journeys and taking countless different forms ,

here is a distribution table to explain how little water is for us to drink and 75% of that is in the ice ,And a lot of this ice is now melting and running into the sea ,changing the good sweet water to salt water.

25% of the planets surface is land
75%of the surface is salt water and it is rising

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97%of the Earths water is salt

fresh water is only 3% of all the Earths water
most of it is beyond out reach

now much ice is melting and running into the seas fresh water lost for ever.

STORAGE or Location of % of the fresh water
ice and glaziers 74%
groundwater 800 meters + 13.5 %
groundwater less than 800meters 11.o%
Lakes 0.3%
soils 0.006%
Atmospheric in circulation 0.0035%
rivers 0.03%


frozen land or permafrost is not included and represent an unavailable storage of 40%

so of the 3% about 11.6 ,is easily available to us ,in rivers, lakes and ground water surface aquifers,more and more of this is becoming contaminated

Answer 2

In general terms, yes, as an illustration ofv the fact that nearly all water on Earth is in circulation between oceans and land. Certainly you could not guarantee that the water you drink has not been through many organisms - human and other - before you drink it.

Answer 3

You know, my issue with the quote starts at the beginning. Why does our age celebrate tolerance and pluralism? There is one truth (yup, I am an objectivist) in the world. Things cannot be two ways at once. It is one thing to tolerate others actions and beliefs that differ from our own, and another to accept them. . . I try not to be rude to people who believe and act different from me, but I will not say that what they belive and do is okay. By the way, I suspect that many faiths feel that the claim of there only being one way to God is offensive, not just the Hindus.

Answer 4

That's not necessarily true. Water molecules are broken down and reformed millions of times over the many centuries, so although it is possible to drink the same molecule of water that someone else drank once, it's not necessarily so.

What's reused are the atoms that make up everything on the planet.

Answer 5

Ok, there is not always the same amount of water on the planet at all times, but there is always the same amount of H2O on the planet at all times. I know that's confusing but if you add up all of the water, ice and water vapor on the planet it's always the same and will never increase or decrease.

Einstein drank a glass of water, then he used the bathroom, he flushed, the flushed water went into the river (which it did back then), the river water evaporated into the air, the water vapor created a cloud, the cloud rained onto the ground, the rain seeped into the ground water, the ground water came up a well, the well water became drinking water.

It's all reused over and over again. So yes everything you drink has been drank and eliminated by somebody else but the ecosystem has a way of cleaning it so that you don't really have to worry about drinking somebody's elimination.

The one problem we do have is potable, or drinkable water. Civilized countries have high standards when it comes to drinking water and it does take time for water to become "pure" enough to drink.

I'm sure there is oceanic water or deep ground water that has never been drank, but wouldn't you assume that through association with other water that you could consider it to have been?

Answer 6

It appears to be so and the nature water cycle is beautiful. I don't think NASA could of designed it better. Our air is recycled by plants and the plants also recycle our fossil fuels. I like to look at the earth as a very special space ship on a very long voyage. The controls for this must be totally automatic because of the stupidity of the people.

Answer 7

Water is being added to the earth all the time from outer space (comet dust)** as well as coming to the surface (where we can get our hands on it) from deep aquifer storage or from volcanoes where perhaps that deep water has been away from the surface since before humans evolved. So....the answer is yes, there is some small amount of new water appearing in the earth's biosphere all the time (and some probably leaving the earth as water vapor lost to space).
No one can know the fate of individual water molecules in the cycle, of course. But here is a cool factoid:
Water molecules are so fantastically small that if you were to take a cup of water, dump it into the ocean, wait a zillion years for it to completely mix and then scoop out another random cup....that second cup would have something like 1000 molecules (on the average) from your first cup all those many moons ago. That is how many more molecules of water are in a cup vs. how many cups are in all the world's oceans. Cool!

** there is even a theory that most of the earth's water came originally from comets.

Answer 8

That's right. Any water you drink has been injested and expelled in waste, went down the line and used again and again. Hell, that's nothing. The international space station uses a centrafuge and spins the impurities out of the urine and then they put iodine in it and drink it. It is germ free when they finish prosessing it, but it makes me a little sick to my stomach to thik about it.

Answer 9

yes it's all refinded

Answer 10

ewwwwwwwwww thank's dude just finsh lunch