WASHINGTON, Sept. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:
PURIFYING WATER
Profile America — Tuesday, September 20th. We pretty much take for granted that the municipal water that comes out of the faucets in our homes is safe to drink. But getting to that point was a major advance for civilization and health. The nation's first water filtration system began operating on this date in 1893 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The system was a nearly three-acre sand filter, which trapped typhoid fever-causing bacteria from water piped from the polluted Merrimack River. In the four years after the filter was in operation, the town's death rate from typhoid fever had fallen almost 78 percent from what it was in the four years preceding filtration. For those taking no chances, bottled water manufacturing is a $6.6 billion dollar a year business in the U.S. today. You can find more facts about America's people, places and economy, from the American Community Survey, at www.census.gov.
Sources: Kane's Famous First Facts, 2234
Filtration and typhoid/page 4/accessed 7/5/2016: www.tbp.org/pubs/Features/W10Bell.pdf
Bottled water revenues/NAICS 312112: http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ASM/2014/31VS101//prodsvc~312112
Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotion of the U.S. Census Bureau. Statistics and accounts drawn from cited non-Census sources are employed for illustrative or narrative purposes, and are not attested to by the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for "Audio" in the "Library" pull-down menu).
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SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau
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