More than one billion people in the world today lack clean, fresh water. In much of the world, people die of water–borne diseases, such as cholera and dysentery. Increasing populations, environmental degradation, and changes in precipitation patterns increasingly stress the availability of local water resources. Water shortages are a world health, economic, and security issue.

In places with abundant, high-quality, potable water supplies, such as the U.S., water treatment and distribution infrastructure can fall into disrepair and require upgrading. Even the best of current water treatment technologies fail to remove the ever-increasing load of chemicals and pharmaceuticals and their metabolic byproducts from the drinking water supply. Lack of confidence in the cleanliness of municipal water supplies has led to the growth of the multi-billion dollar personal water supply market that is supplied by in-home water filtration and bottled water. The personal water market focuses on water for human consumption. AquaVentus is competitive in this market.

The availability of safe, good tasting water for drinking and cooking is becoming an important issue for an increasing number of people. There is increasing skepticism surrounding the quality of public water supplies is demonstrated by filtration and treatment of water at its point of use and by the growth of the bottled water industry. A personal water market has been created because water stress has caused increasingly less high quality water to be accessed. For instance, the water supply of New York, which used to be drawn from exclusively from mountain lakes, is now partly supplied by also drawing water from the Hudson River. The same is true for many other cities, in particular those on the Ohio-Mississippi River systems and in other places where water may be used in potable systems more than once. The newest water source in water stressed regions is treated sewage, which may be medically safe but is unpalatable to most people.