Today is World Toilet Day!
- Heather Allen
- International Advocate, Washington, DC
- Blog | About
- Posted November 19, 2009 in Environmental Justice , Health and the Environment
It's a fun way to build awareness for a very serious problem. Safe water and sanitation are the world's most pressing environmental health challenges as NRDC has highlighted here and here. Luckily World Toilet Day celebrations in DC did reach lots of people.
This morning on a radio show, Congressman Earl Blumenauer highlighted the importance of safe places for people to defecate and urinate. 2.5 billion people worldwide don't have access to a safe private toilet and as a result millions of people, especially young children, die of diarrheal illnesses unnecessarily.
During lunchtime in DC a variety of health, development, and water and sanitation organizations joined together to create an exhibit in front of the Capitol building showing that sanitation can provide dignity, health and safety. Children from a local school even brought signs and explained why they thought toilets were important.
What would you do if you didn't have a toilet?
Take a minute and check out news about these events around the world that are part of World Toilet Day. And see what you can do to raise awareness about this important issue. We've said it before and we will say it again It's Time to Use Your Potty Mouth.
Happy Toilet Day!
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Comments
Ghas Wahab — Nov 19 2009 11:33 PM
it is very good to celebrate this day as world toilet day.it is obviously an effort to reconize the important of the environment and the cleaness of the living place to public. how they should take care of their toilet, keep it clean and protect their lives. but you ever thought that the poor people of the poor nation, that even do not have any toilet, what they will.must think about this
Heather Allen — Nov 20 2009 10:36 AM
Thanks Ghas,
The poor of the world are exactly the people we need to be thinking about on world toilet day. And its the children of the poor who suffer the most from lack of safe water and sanitation. Check out this AP article http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091119/ap_on_re_as/as_world_s_children_forgotten_killers
And please keep spreading the word that this is world's most solvable environmental health crisis!