Why is it that we are unable to consume saltwater?

 
The oceans contain more than 96 percent of the world's liquid water, but because of the high salt concentration in this water, it is not suitable for human consumption. Even though water is necessary for survival, ocean water cannot be consumed.
 
The salty water of the ocean won't satisfy your thirst, and if you drink too much of it, you could end up dying from dehydration.
 
But if seawater is a different kind of still water, why can't we drink it?
 
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), dissolved salt accounts for approximately 3.5 percent of the weight of salt water. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that if all of the salt in the world's oceans were extracted and spread out over the planet's land surfaces, a layer of salt would tower more than 500 feet (166 meters) high. This is roughly the height of a forty-story office building. Rob DeSalle, a curator at the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, states that our cells require water "in a relatively pure form." Still, seawater's salinity, or saltiness, is too high for humans to process safely. Seawater's salinity can be measured in parts per thousand, or ppt.
 
DeSalle told Live Science that "for the majority of animals," the kidneys are responsible for filtering contaminants out of water. When you consume seawater, you take in a significant amount of salt, which your body must delete through various elimination processes.
 
It does this in the form of urine, produced by the kidneys by dissolving waste products in the body's surplus water. The urine is then transported to the bladder, where it is removed from the body. But according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (opens in a new tab), the kidneys can only create less salty urine than our blood, and saltwater contains more than three times the amount of salt ordinarily found in human blood. This indicates that for your kidneys to excrete all that salt, you will need to consume at least the same volume of water as you did when you drank the salt water, which is one cup for each cup of saltwater.
 
"You might respond with something along the lines of, 'Why not just drink more saltwater?'" DeSalle stated. However, after that, you will only be left with additional salt, which will require you to flush it out with even more water. Therefore, drinking seawater will never satisfy your thirst; instead, it will only worsen it. "
 
If there are species that can survive on salt water, why can't humans?
 
However, some species that live in ocean environments have evolved in such a way that enables them to drink seawater without any ill effects. According to the Audubon Society, seabirds like albatrosses, gulls, and penguins, which can spend weeks at a time on the open ocean with no source of fresh water in sight, have specialized salt glands and grooves in their bills that allow them to filter and purge excess salt from the water they ingest before it reaches their stomachs and is absorbed into their blood. This is done before the salt is absorbed into their blood (opens in a new tab). In addition, marine mammals such as whales, dolphins, and seals have adapted over millions of years to survive in an environment with little or no access to fresh water.
 
"Marine animals have acquired particular enzymes and cellular structures that allow them to purge excess salt from their systems," DeSalle said. "These adaptations allow marine mammals to purge excess salt from their systems." "It's almost as if they have super kidneys," said the doctor.
 
So then, what's stopping us? The availability of saltwater is substantially greater than that of freshwater. Therefore, why did humans and nearly all other terrestrial creatures adapt to drinking freshwater? When animals first began to emerge from the oceans hundreds of millions of years ago and began to adapt to life on land, species began to move away from coastal environments with a lot of saltwater. This occurred when animals began transitioning from life on the ancient seas to living on land. Many terrestrial animals, including the ancestors of the primates that we are descended from, eventually moved inland to inhabit environments that had an abundance of fresh water in the form of lakes and rivers but very few or no sources of saltwater at all. This most likely influenced the biological changes required for drinking water that did not contain salt.
 
According to DeSalle, "The majority of our predecessors were not exposed to saltwater, regardless of whether they were animals in general, primates, or insectivores." Because of this, natural selection has focused on processing freshwater, and human physiology has become so well-adjusted as a result, to the point where disturbing it with saltwater in the future becomes exceedingly harmful and detrimental.

 

 

 

 

 

 Article source : https://www.livescience.com/32454-why-cant-we-drink-saltwater.html

Image source :  https://pixabay.com/id/photos/pantai-laut-matahari-terbenam-1751455/

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