We have a breakout in Northern Utah of cryptosporidium, a parasite that causes those infected to be bed-ridden with stomach nausea, diarrhea and dehydration. Originates from people taking a dump and not showering before swimming or cutting loose a wet fart in the pool (A.K.A. diarrhea). They pin it on the kids mostly but I’d bet many adults are guilty of not cleaning their crack before entering. 422 cases (and that is just the “reported” cases) in the last month or so.
Anyone had this happen in their community before? The Health Dept. says next step is to close all pools for “the season”…whatever that means.
What a pain in the ass. They kicked us out of the pool this AM after about 50 mins of swimming to do the hourly “10 min break” so they can test the water.
EVERYBODY has bacteria in there crack before they swim, it’s unavoidable. Don’t they put enough chemicals in pools to kill all that stuff anyway? Hey, here’s an idea… don’t drink the water!
Oh great. This is not making me look forward to getting back into the pool this winter. I’d better enjoy my open water swims as long as I can. At least there is enough water in the local pond to dissipate this stuff. Yuck.
IIRC chlorine doesn’t kill cryptosporidium fast enough. I think you need ozone or UV treatment to kill it.
Ergo the problem.
We all swallow water when we siwm, it’s a given. It’s just a matter of how much.
I recently saw a paper where someone researched the assumptions of how much you swallow when swimming. The health departments have a number the use, I think it’s around 100 - 150 ml. They then use this number to set the allowable concentration of bacteria in open water and the allowable time to kill in pool water.
Back in the middle 90’s we had it in our city’s (Milwaukee, WI) drinking water. Hundreds and hundreds of reported cases, people with low immune systems died. Not good. The fecile matter can come from any mammal. It does not have to be people poop. Rain run off from farms, kennels, etc. can contaminate a water source very easily.
I have showed up at the Y a few times and have been told the Pool is closed due to a “fecal discharge”. When there is a floater they fish it out and do some sort of shock treatment. Best not to think about any of this too much.
I lived in Milwaukee when crypto was found in the drinking water and I remember all of my classes being cancelled for the week because so many people were out sick. I would think a lot of it at a pool would have to do with them not putting enough chemicals in the pool. I know this is irrational on my part but I avoid pools where there is consistently a lot of kids because there have been a few community pools (that tend to have a lot of little kids) that I refuse to go to when I visit my parents because I consistently found myself throwing up with flulike symptoms within a few hours everytime I came home and went there.
DOODY!!!