13 sick; Cryptosporidium in Irish water supply again

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Doug Powell

Contaminated water has left 13 people with stomach illnesses after two outbreaks of cryptosporidiosis.

The Sun says up to 6,000 people in Roscommon town and its surrounds have been affected by the bug in the local water supply.

A “boil water notice” has been in place since April 25.

People living and working in the area have been advised by Roscommon County Council and the HSE to boil all water for drinking, preparation of salads and for use in brushing teeth.

Both bodies have set up an Incident Response Team to minimize the risk to the public.

Sales of bottled water have shot up in the area amid concerns that the boil water restriction could remain in place until the system gets the all-clear, which could take several weeks.

Roscommon County Council confirmed three dead calves were removed from a stream which is a tributary of one of the sources for the Roscommon town central water scheme where cryptosporidiosis has been detected.

The townlands affected are Killaraght, Rockingham, Knockvicar, Cootehall, Tarmon Road, Kiltycreighton, Crossna, Derrycashel, Moigh, Carigeenroe, Battlebridge and Ardcarne.

Dead man found in Saudi Arabia drinking water tank

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Doug Powell

Residents of a building in Saudi Arabia had banged the head of the landlord about the change in the taste of the drinking water until they decided to act on their own. When they opened the water tank on the roof, they found a dead man inside.

The residents of the building in the western town of Makkah had noticed the change for two days before the stench from the decomposing body began to pervade their flats.

“When they opened the tank, they found a dead man…they notified the police who took the body to the coroner to determine the cause of the man’s death,” Al Madina daily said, adding that police did not find signs of bruises on the body.

Would you prefer a cell phone or clean water?

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Doug Powell

The United Nations says six billion of the world’s seven billion people have mobile phones but only 4.5 billion have access to toilets or latrines.

So the UN is launching a global campaign to improve sanitation for the 2.5 billion people who don’t have it.

UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson called their plight “a silent disaster” that reflects the extreme poverty and huge inequalities in the world today.

Eliasson told a press conference Thursday that the issue must be addressed immediately for the world to meet the UN goal of halving the proportion of people without access to sanitation by the end of 2015. World leaders set a series of Millennium Development Goals to combat poverty at a summit in 2000, and Eliasson said the sanitation goal lags farthest behind.

While most people don’t want to talk about the problem, Eliasson said, “it goes to the heart of ensuring good health, a clean environment and fundamental dignity for billions of people.”

The UN said action must include eliminating by 2025 the practice of open defecation, which perpetuates disease.

Know thy water sources: Missouri, Jackson fitness center reach settlement in E. coli case

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Doug Powell

Owners of a Jackson fitness center and the state of Missouri have reached a settlement in a court battle about drinking water served by the center that state regulators said sickened several people with E. coli in 2010.

An investigation by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services tracked the source of illness to the Class Act Family Fitness Center’s water
and found the center was connected to an unauthorized and contaminated farm well.

The center’s owners, Shawn and Lynn McNally, were, according to the Southeast Missourian, sued in 2011 by Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster for violating the state’s safe drinking water laws, and by the parents of eight children who contracted E. coli.

Koster on Tuesday said in a news release the McNallys will connect hand washing sinks in the facility’s restrooms to a state-approved drinking water holding tank with new water treatment and distribution systems. The water-distribution system will be a regulated public water system under the Missouri Safe Drinking Water Law. The McNallys also agreed to obtain a permit from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to dispense drinking water to the public and refrain from supplying drinking water from the fitness center’s old well for public consumption, according to the release. The couple also will pay a civil penalty of $22,500 with $15,000 suspended upon compliance with the judgment, as well as the state’s court costs, according to the court ruling.

In 2011, the McNallys’ attorney, Cynthia Masterson of St. Louis, denied water samples taken by DNR tested positive for E. coli and said the McNallys had no knowledge of or control over the children’s alleged illnesses.

“Whatever injuries or damages plaintiffs may have suffered, if any, were the result of their own failure to exercise due care for their safety at the time and place in question,” she said at the time.

“We, very unfairly, got bad rap from the whole thing,” Shawn McNally told the Southeast Missourian in December 2011.

The only ones who got a bad rap were the kids who got sick.

Crypto outbreak in Victoria, Australia pools

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Doug Powell

Victorians could be in the poo, literally, if they sought relief at the local pool.

Victoria’s chief health officer Dr Rosemary Lester said there has been a three-fold increase in gastro cases after hot weather sparked people seeking to cool off at public swimming pools.

She urged those who have had diarrhea not to go into a swimming pool for at least 14 days after symptoms had stopped for fear of passing on the bug.

There were 155 Victorian cases of gastro caused by the cryptosporidium parasite last month, three times the February average of 53.

45 sick; checking for Cryptosporidium in NZ water

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Doug Powell

Hawke’s Bay’s water operators are checking the region’s supplies for contamination of Cryptosporidium.

Health authorities have, according to the New Zealand Herald, issued a warning following the diagnosis of 45 people over the past two months.

Medical Officer of Health Dr Nicholas Jones said the health protection team is analysing information to establish the cause of the outbreak – and expect there is more than one source.

“We’ve been in touch with the water operators and they don’t think they’ve got problems at the moment, but obviously it’s something we’re going to be looking into in more detail,” said Dr Jones.

Chilliwack must chlorinate water due to E. coli risk

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Doug Powell

My high school girlfriend had eclectic taste in music. She got me into Neil Young, and I always associate the song, When You Dance, I Can Really Love, with her, but she also liked Chilliwack.

And they were terrible.

To the people of Chilliwack, B.C., chlorine should be your friend.

According to The Province, a battle is on tap between Chilliwack and the local health authority after Fraser Health told council Tuesday that the city must begin chlorinating its water.

Citing the discovery of E. coli in the Chilliwack water system over three of the past four summers, Fraser Health medical health officer Dr. Marcus Lem told council the city will be required to add chlorine to its water.

Lem said present testing methods sample only a tiny fragment of Chilliwack’s water and told council, “You probably have E. coli contamination within your water system all the time.”

Environmental sources of E. coli are not always what they seem

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Doug Powell

Up to 24 per cent of E. coli in soil sediment is from urban, not farm runoff, in areas of California.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists have identified sources of E. coli bacteria that could help restore the reputation of local livestock. Studies by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist Mark Ibekwe suggest that in some parts of California, pathogens in local waterways are more often carried there via runoff from urban areas, not from animal production facilities.

Even though most strains of E. coli are non-pathogenic, the bacterium is monitored by public health officials as an indicator of water quality. Cows are often seen as the culprits when E. coli is found in local lakes, rivers and other bodies of water.

Ibekwe, who works at the ARS U.S. Salinity Laboratory in Riverside, Calif., and his colleagues collected 450 water and sediment samples from 20 sites throughout California’s middle Santa Ana River Watershed. The collection sites included urban areas, livestock feeding areas, parks, National Forest lands, and three wastewater treatment plants.

Then the scientists extracted E. coli bacteria from each sample and identified 600 different isolates of E. coli in their samples, many of which could be placed into six clonal populations. They found the greatest variety of different types of E. coli in runoff discharged from areas dominated by urban development or human activities.

Ibekwe also tested all the E. coli isolates for resistance to various antibiotics. He found that from 88 to 95 percent of the isolates were resistant to rifampicin, and that around 75 percent were resistant to tetracycline. Tetracycline resistance was by far the most common type of resistance observed in E. coli isolates collected near wastewater treatment plants.

The scientists also found that 24 percent of E. coli collected in sediment samples associated with urban runoff—a total of 144 isolates—showed resistance to as many as seven antibiotics. Results from this work were published in PLOS ONE.

Changes planned after Las Vegas marathon illness probe

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Doug Powell

On Dec. 4, 2011, some 44,000 runners participated in the annual Rock ‘n’ Roll marathon in Las Vegas. About 500 got sick with sapovirus.

A health district investigation determined that people were probably exposed to the virus the morning before the race — maybe at a runners’ expo where race numbers were distributed, although water distribution during the race had been suspected.

This year, organizers are promising several changes, including strict sanitation rules and a contractor supplying water to runners.

Filthy water for ag workers in California

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Doug Powell

Like most children, the students at Stone Corral Elementary School in Seville, Calif., here rejoice when the bell rings for recess and delight in christening a classroom pet.

But while growing up in this impoverished agricultural community of numbered roads and lush citrus orchards, young people have learned a harsh life lesson: “No tomes el agua!” — “Don’t drink the water!”

According to the New York Times, Seville, with a population of about 300, is one of dozens of predominantly Latino unincorporated communities in the Central Valley plagued for decades by contaminated drinking water. It is the grim result of more than half a century in which chemical fertilizers, animal wastes, pesticides and other substances have infiltrated aquifers, seeping into the groundwater and eventually into the tap. An estimated 20 percent of small public water systems in Tulare County are unable to meet safe nitrate levels, according to a United Nations representative.

In farmworker communities like Seville, a place of rusty rural mailboxes and backyard roosters where the average yearly income is $14,000, residents like Rebecca Quintana pay double for water: for the tap water they use to shower and wash clothes, and for the five-gallon bottles they must buy weekly for drinking, cooking and brushing their teeth.

It is a life teeming with worry: about children accidentally sipping contaminated water while cooling off with a garden hose, about not having enough clean water for an elderly parent’s medications, about finding a rock while cleaning the feeding tube of a severely disabled daughter, as Lorie Nieto did. She vowed never to use tap water again.

Chris Kemper, the school’s principal, budgets $100 to $500 a month for bottled water. He recalled his astonishment, upon his arrival four years ago, at encountering the “ghost” drinking fountains, shut off to protect students from “weird foggyish water,” as one sixth grader, Jacob Cabrera, put it. Mr. Kemper said he associated such conditions with third world countries. “I always picture it as a laptop a month for the school,” he said of the added cost of water.

Here in Tulare County, one of the country’s leading dairy producers, where animal waste lagoons penetrate the air and soil, most residents rely on groundwater as the source for drinking water. A study by the University of California, Davis, this year estimated that 254,000 people in the Tulare Basin and Salinas Valley, prime agricultural regions with about 2.6 million residents, were at risk for nitrate contamination of their drinking water. Nitrates have been linked to thyroid disease and make infants susceptible to “blue baby syndrome,” a potentially fatal condition that interferes with the blood’s capacity to carry oxygen.

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