Water Facts

Roughly 70 percent of an adult’s body is made up of water.

At birth, water accounts for approximately 80 percent of an infant’s body weight.

A healthy person can drink about three gallons (48 cups) of water per day.

Drinking too much water too quickly can lead to water intoxication. Water intoxication occurs when water dilutes the sodium level in the bloodstream and causes an imbalance of water in the brain.

While the daily recommended amount of water is eight cups per day, not all of this water must be consumed in the liquid form. Nearly every food or drink item provides some water to the body.

Soft drinks, coffee, and tea, while made up almost entirely of water, also contain caffeine. Caffeine can act as a mild diuretic, preventing water from traveling to necessary locations in the body.

Pure water (solely hydrogen and oxygen atoms) has a neutral pH of 7, which is neither acidic nor basic.

Water dissolves more substances than any other liquid. Wherever it travels, water carries chemicals, minerals, and nutrients with it.

Somewhere between 70 and 75 percent of the earth’s surface is covered with water.

The total amount of water on the earth is about 326 million cubic miles of water.

Of all the water on the earth, humans can used only about three tenths of a percent of this water. Such usable water is found in groundwater aquifers, rivers, and freshwater lakes.

The United States uses about 346,000 million gallons of fresh water every day.

The weight a person loses directly after intense physical activity is weight from water, not fat.

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