SHANGHAI - Visitors to the Shanghai World Expo have consumed 105,000 tonnes of water provided by direct-drinkable water supply devices since the six-month gala began on May 1.

The higher-than-expected amounts of water drunk by visitors was due to high temperatures during the sultry summer days over the past two months in Shanghai, expo organizers said Tuesday.

The water used was the equivalent of 210 million 0.5-liter plastic bottles, Zhu Xiangjun, a senior manager with the Litree Company, the authorized direct-drinkable water device provider based in the southern city of Shenzhen, estimated Tuesday.

Theoretically, this meant pollution that might have been caused by more than 200 million plastic bottles has been avoided.? The organizers estimated that over the past two months, every visitor to the Expo drank two liters of water each day. They forecast that visitors would drink 165,000 tonnes of water provided by direct-drinkable water devices inside the Expo Park during the entire six-month period of the expo.

According to the organizers, direct-drinkable water provided at the Expo Park has been treated with the same super-filtering technology used during the disaster relief work following the deadly 8-magnitude earthquake in May 2008, in southwestern China's Sichuan Province and used in water provided for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

More than 100 "water guards" maintain the supply of direct-drinkable water every day inside the 3.28-square-km Expo Park. Among them, 39 technicians are in charge of equipment maintenance, and 75 cleaners maintain the sanitation of the water supply facilities.