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Government and other scientists have identified hundreds of chemicals that are linked to diseases in small concentrations and that are unregulated in drinking water or policed at limits that still pose serious risks.

Around New York City, samples collected at dozens of beaches or piers have detected the types of bacteria and other pollutants tied to sewage overflows. Though the city's drinking water comes from upstate reservoirs, environmentalists say untreated excrement and other waste in the city's waterways pose serious health risks.

Drinking water that does not meet a federal health guideline will not necessarily make someone ill. Many contaminants are hazardous only if consumed for years. And some researchers argue that even toxic chemicals, when consumed at extremely low doses over long periods, pose few risks.

The situation is quite serious - groundwater is important source for water use, including drinking water, and if it gets contaminated, it's very costly and difficult to clean.

Even if it had not been possible to reproduce the disease in animals and consequently to verify the hypothesis, this simple observation would have been sufficient to demonstrate the way in which the disease was propagated.

People with water-borne diseases occupy more than 50% of hospital beds across the world. Does the answer lie in building more hospitals? Really, what is needed is to give them clean water.

Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.

Water links us all as human beings. Everyone needs water, and we all have challenges about it, no matter where we live. Yet even in the U.S., people aren't aware of problems facing water.

It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.

The Safe Drinking Water Act was passed in 1974 after tests discovered carcinogens, lead and dangerous bacteria flowing from faucets in New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Boston and elsewhere.