Groundwater and Pesticides: Effects on Health, the Environment, and the Relevance of Environmental Education in this Scenario

The Brazilian Water Scenario

The pandemic that emerged on 12/31/2019 in the city of Wuhan in China of the new strain of coronavirus (2019-nCoV), better known as COVID-19, officially announced in early 2020 by the World Health Organization – WHO (UN NEWS, 2021), which seemed more like a health problem and local environmental imbalance, offered us a new look at the whole that surrounds us, as it exacerbated our structural deficiencies and allowed us more extraordinary environmental reflections.

By revealing inequality in access to water, it highlighted the existence of 'water poverty' (ANA, 2019) in Brazil, confirming that the 'address'/household should be seen as a risk factor for the pandemic, increasing the spread of the virus in underserved areas. sanitation (CIDADES SUSTENTÁVEIS, 2021). After all, the simple act of washing our hands can ward off contamination, and not everyone has access to this good of life, hence the need for an integrated and holistic vision of the city to achieve environmental balance in all its aspects, such as treating and distributing water through engineering works, for example.

In this sense, we can see in the survey (Figure 1) by Rebouças (2002), which presents a picture of water availability in Brazilian regions, proving that spatial distribution and availability are significantly unequal within the national territory. Moreover, based on this knowledge about sanitation, notably access to treated water in Brazilian regions, the data are presented in a much more conflicting way (Figure 2).

Figure 1.

Table of water availability by Brazilian regions

(Adapted from Rebouças (2002) with population data updated by IBGE, 2010)