This paper examines the influence of water on public health throughout history. Farming, settling down and building of villages and towns meant the start of the problems mankind suffers from this very day – how to get drinkable water for humans and cattle and how to manage the waste we produce. The availability of water in large quantities has been considered an essential part of a civilized way of life in different periods: Roman baths needed a lot of water as does the current Western way of life with water closets and showers. The importance of good quality drinking water was realized already in antiquity, yet the importance of proper sanitation was not understood until the 19th century.

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Since ancient times, the need for healthy water has resulted in the development of various kinds of water supply systems. From early history, civilizations have developed water purification devices and treatment methods. The necessity for fresh water has influenced individual lives as well as communities and societies. During the last two hundred years, intensive and effective efforts have been made internationally for sufficient water quantity and quality. At the same time, human life expectancy has increased all over the globe at unprecedented rates. The present work represents an effort to sketch out how water purity and life expectancy have entangled, thus influencing one another. Water properties and characteristics have directly affected life quality and longevity. The dramatic increase in life expectancy has been, indisputably, affected by the improvement in water quality, but also in other concomitant factors, varying temporally and spatially in different parts of the world throughout the centuries. Water technologies and engineering have an unequivocal role on life expectancy. In some cases, they appear to have taken place earlier than the progress of modern medicine. Among these, improved sanitation, personal hygiene, progress in medicine, and better standards of economic living have played the greatest roles.

Water fountains are part of every human settlement, and historical and mythological stories. They are the source from which life-sustaining water was distributed to people until piped systems started providing fresh tap water inside buildings. In many places, people visit fountains to experience the freshness of running water, to prepare for prayers, or to make a wish. Fountains have also provided water for the people of cities under siege, and purified OPEN ACCESS

The concepts and principles associated with Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) have been around for many decades. The IWRM approach of merging water and wastewater utilities into a single organization has several advantages, particularly for larger urban areas. Not only can pipes for both services be laid in the same excavation, but human resources can also be conserved through cross‐training of water supply and wastewater services personnel. Although there are advantages, for a variety of reasons the concept has been slow to gain acceptance. Some of these reasons have to do with the approach to utility services in different countries; for example, in Germany wastewater services fall under the purview of the roads department. Utility services in Finland, and to a lesser extent Sweden, provide opportunities to study the implementation of IWRM on a wider scale. Certainly the mergers of water and wastewater utilities in these two countries have had their challenges. There has sometimes been little cooperation, and even a culture of rivalry between staff of the merged utilities. But more significant, there has been very little documentation about how the processes of separate utilities providing different services were actually merged. This article looks at what is known and what information is lacking about these types of mergers and suggests areas for additional study. The authors suggest that the lessons learned from the implementation of IWRM in Finland and Sweden have wider global applications as countries search for ways to incorporate greater efficiencies while working with increasingly limited resources.