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How much drinking water is recommended per person per day?

KnowledgePointAdmin
RedR CCDRR

All the definite figures (ie 20 - 50 litres per person per day) I can find in the internet include water for cleaning and sanitation etc, but just for drinking (and maybe cooking too) is there a recommended amount?

Comments

The recommended water intake per day depends on various aspects, including climate, the level of activity of the person and overall health condition. The hotter the climate, the more you sweat and consequently the higher is the amount of water that you should drink. Likewise, water requirement is more if you perform exercises or other activities that make you sweat. Health conditions that cause excessive excretion (e.g. vomiting, diarrhea) is another factor that increases the recommended water intake per day. There is no absolute answer, however the European Food Safety Authority recommends that women should drink about 1.6 litres of fluid and men should drink about 2.0 litres of fluid per day. Some of this fluid will come from food. Regards Harriette

Harriette Purchas gravatar imageHarriette Purchas ( 2014-01-13 10:53:20 )

Thanks Harriette

Binaya gravatar imageBinaya ( 2014-01-14 09:12:33 )

2 Answers

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Martin Currie _ Aqueum
RedR

I had hoped to find a WHO (or similar) calculator that gives the recommended drinking water intake per day, based on activity and climatic conditions. I can't comment on the accuracy of this calculator, but the questions it asks at least give a good indication of the factors that affect intake requirements: https://nutrition.about.com/library/blwatercalculator.htm

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If forced to use a rule of thumb when splitting water requirements along the lines of potable water and water for washing, flushing etc in emergencies then I'd aim to supply 3 litres per person per day of potable water for drinking and try to achieve that. As Harriette has pointed out the sedentary minimums may be less but the actual amount needed will depend on climate, level of activity and exposure to heat/sun/extent that people sweat and how much water comes from food. In other words the 3 litres pppd figure is a safe figure for 'public information consumption' to aim for. Averaging in this way is probably ok in that smaller humans drink less water than bigger ones.

UNHCR guidance states that a minimum of between 3 and 10 lpppd is required but should rise as soon as possible to 15 lpppd. In other places the minimum is stated as 7 lpppd.

I have seen a table of how water usage splits but cannot think exactly where to find it and it is bound to be only appropriate to a certain context (I think I saw it in the S Pacific in relation to the recent drought in the Marshall Islands)

This may be useful: https://www.spherehandbook.org/en/water-supply-standard-1-access-and-water-quantity/ and alternatively presented in a cute way: https://www.ineesite.org/eietrainingmodule/standards/watersupply/accessAndWaterQuantity.php

One way to focus your internet searches is to append filetype:pdf to searches making documents come to the fore.

Hope the above helps.