What fraction of the world’s population enjoys sanitation standards better than ancient Rome’s?

McGruff

In 1995, 20 per cent of the world population did not have access to safe drinking water and 50 per cent lacked water for proper sanitation. http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/sustdev/waterrep.htm Jul 02 07, 10:11 AM

McGruff

Of specific importance is the notion that the citizens of ancient Rome and us share the experience of living in rather dense urban areas where sanitation is paramount. Interestingly, because of more or less efficient systems of water supply and sewers, both, the classical city of ancient Rome in general and our cities today can be said to have a rather high standard for supplying clean water and disposing of sewage. Actually by comparison, the Romans may have outdone us in terms of the quantity of water delivered to the city proper and in the efficiency of disposing waste water. In Roman Roads and Aqueducts Don Nardo calculates that the flow of the eleven Roman aqueducts to service Rome's population of over one million could potentially deliver about 250 gallons of water per day per person compared to about 125 gallons per day that a typical water authority can supply the average American town. Both societies have also demonstrated how to efficiently facilitate water disposal; Romans also constructed crowned roads with raised sidewalks. Covered sewers large enough to walk in were common in busy areas of the city. The Cloaca Maxima, part of a drainage system built by the Etruscans still drains storm run-off from a modern Roman Road into the Tiber. It can be viewed from the Ponte Palatino. Perhaps it is worth saying that these standards are high compared to woeful accounts of the unsanitary conditions of crowded European cities in the Middle Ages, where sewage flew from apartment windows and waste water pooled in the streets. So aqueducts are a useful avenue to explore how a civilization maintains a high standard of health - more health than the monarchies that arose following Rome's decline. http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/2006/4/06.04.04.x.html Jul 02 07, 10:16 AM