678 - The Urgent Need to Conserve Groundwater
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 23 October 2023
⏱️ 13 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Humans are using up groundwater—or water stored in naturally occurring aquifers underground—at a dangerous pace. Kellogg Schwab, the Abel Wolman professor in water and public health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about why groundwater is being depleted so quickly, what needs to happen to ensure the world doesn't run out of this precious resource, and how water conservation could bring people together across state and country borders.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh.h.u. |
| 0:23.8 | That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:32.0 | This is Lindsay Smith-Roggers, producer of Public Health on Call. |
| 0:35.7 | Today, Groundwater. Kellogg Schwab is the able woman |
| 0:39.2 | professor in water in public health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He |
| 0:43.7 | speaks to Dr. Josh Sharfstein about the depletion and contamination of groundwater in the U.S. and around |
| 0:49.4 | the world and what's being done to stop it. Let's listen. |
| 0:59.8 | Dr. Kellogg-Schwap, thank you so much for joining me in public health on call to talk about something that most of us know is there, but we don't think about very much. And I'm talking about groundwater. |
| 1:06.4 | And I'd like to start by asking you as a water expert, what is groundwater? |
| 1:11.9 | It's a pleasure to be here. And so what is groundwater? It's water that's under the ground. |
| 1:17.1 | What does that mean? That means it's usually stored in what we call aquifers. So these are below |
| 1:22.7 | the ground areas as opposed to what we call surface water, which are rivers and lakes and other sources there. |
| 1:29.6 | And these groundwater supplies can be vast. They can be very large, but they're unseen for the most part. |
| 1:36.1 | Why are they important? |
| 1:38.2 | Oh, groundwater is incredibly important for the purposes that we like to use it for, which includes a lot of its agricultural uses. |
| 1:47.5 | Things are pumped up out of the ground to water crops, but also for drinking water. |
| 1:52.3 | It's used for that. |
| 1:53.6 | And other approaches that would be done for industry as well. |
| 1:57.1 | So it's both municipal, industry, and a vast majority is for agriculture purposes. |
| 2:02.6 | And there has been some reporting recently that our groundwater is under threat. I just want to |
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