53 Interesting Facts About the Number 53 #15: 53% of human mass is water

Because water is on a lot of people’s minds, what with the drought and climate change–it even made the President’s speech at the White House Correspondent’s dinner last night and I met today with a group of poets and performers to work on a piece on what we are thirsty for– this week’s interesting fact about the number 53 is that 53% of the human body by mass is made up of water.

And because this is Earth Month and National Poetry Month, I’m going to throw in a segment of a poem on water and 6 easy conservation tips (with more to come).

Most of us have grown up hearing that the human body is 98% water. It’s actually 98% water molecules and 53% water in mass.

According to the wikipedia article on “The Compositionof the Human Body,” the amount of water in people depends on body composition and the amount of fat they carry. Adults in developed countries like the United States average 53% water as measured by mass and averaged by gender and other factors. For example, in Americans of the same age, the water fraction by weight for females is 48 ±6% and for men it is 58 ±8% water.^[5]

Water is important to the functioning of the human body which I wrote about in my poem on water and poem which was commissioned and installed as part of a public art work in Pasadena CA.

In part, the poem states:

Water flows within us:
in every breath (breathe) water
in every heart beat (feel) water

Water cycles from sea to sky from body to body
from sky to stream from body to body
from stream to sea from body to being from being to body:
the same water in the first beings flows in our bodies.

We’re all made of re-cycled water:
water re-cycled since the beginning of time.

Without water we cannot smell:
the membranes in our nostrils must be moist.

Feel the glisten on a dog’s nose. Dampen your philtrum. Sniff.

Without water we cannot speak:
our tongues must be wet to work.

Without water, we do not hear:
air carries sound through water.

Without water we cannot see:
we must blink blink blink
keep our eyes constantly rinsed.

Our brains too must be bathed:
without water we explode in pain.

Our constant companion carries us:
through in above with about.

So embedded are we in water
we must look for it to see it:
water is both mirror and window

Read the complete poem here.

Listen to the poem here.

SIX EASY WATER Conservation tips:

ONE: One in 10 households leak 90 gallons or more a day. That’s more than 1 trillion gallons. That’s the annual amount of water used by 11 million homes. So while the real culprits in my opinion are fracking and agriculture, we all need to do our part. And water that leaks is literally just going down the toilet. Learn more about leaks from the EPA here.

TWO: Do you take a cold shower? Probably not. So while the water is warming up, put a 5 gallon bucket in the bathroom and collect the warming water. You can use this water for plants inside or out, to flush the toilet, or to clean the floors. You may find you are collecting 5 or more gallons a day!

THREE: Our son got a kit at school about water conservation and my husband has been busy installing all of the water saving devices with the help of our son who is very excited about this project and has been busy measuring how much water we will be saving, and it is substantial. These include low flow nozzles in all the water faucets in the house.

FOUR: Everyone knows to take shorter showers. But do you know it is really unnecessary and actually BAD for your hair to wash it every day? Yep. Once a week or two is fine– as long as you shower regularly, rinse your hair well, and use conditioner.

FIVE: Buy a steel or glass container for water or reuse a glass one instead of buying plastic water bottles. More water is used to make plastic bottles which really aren’t very recyclable compared to reusing glass or metal. Learn more about the evils of plastic water bottles here. 

SIX: What you eat makes a difference. But don’t worry about almonds. Worry about meat and other processed foods which require much more water to produce than you can imagine. Not saying you have to go vegan or vegetarian. Just cut back on meat and processed foods.