Tag Archives: Water

Don’t swim in shit; sick people in UK and NZ

Posted on by
Reply

A number of teenagers have fallen ill after a skate park was transformed into a makeshift pool filled with river water.

Crowds of young people flocked to the skate park in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, when word spread that it had somehow been filled with water diaperfrom the nearby River Calder to cool off.

Pictures show at least 20 young people swimming in the dirty, brown water during the recent heatwave.

But the decision backfired when several have since fallen ill and are believed to be suffering from sickness and diarrhea.

In New Zealand, Taranaki has seen at least 24 cases of cryptosporidium since the start of year compared with none for the same period last year.

Dr Jonathan Jarman said, “Some of the cases were children but half were adults, and similar outbreaks have also been seen in other parts of New Zealand … some cases in Taranaki became unwell after recently swimming in a pool.” 

Poop, water and illness

Posted on by
Reply

A dozen people – mainly kids — got sick after exposure to raw sewage at a splash pad in Traverse City, Mich., an 8-year-old with cryptosporidium had a dump in a Philadelphia pool that forced its closure July 4, at least 90 people were sickened with Shigella after poop-in-poolswimming at Burrillville’s Spring Lake Beach in Rhode Island, and the municipality of Östersund in northern Sweden has been charged for environmental crimes following an outbreak of cryptosporidium which sickened some 30,000 people in the winter of 2010.

In Sweden, prosecutor Lars Magnusson said, “It concerns the fact that they failed to deliver drinking water free from parasites, and this is something that they are required to do under the drinking water regulations.”

The city established the source of the infection in late 2010, tracing the outbreak to a residential building in the Odensala area of the city. It was found that a sewage pipe had been erroneously connected to a rain water pipe.

Östersund has meanwhile disputed the charges, claiming that it had sufficient checks in place.

In Michigan, city workers discovered June 30 at mid-morning that sewage backed up when a pump station failed and pushed raw caddyshack.pool.poop-1sewage into an underground reservoir that feeds sprinklers for the splash pad, rain arc, and mister.

In Rhode Island, beach manager Cheri Hall rolled out the standard of risk communication bullshit, saying, “We’ve never had a problem. I’ve been manager for 22 years and all of our samples always come back good.”

Real Housewives of Whereverville rejoice; premium water’s what ‘trendy higher-income’ women need

Posted on by
Reply

Nestle’s Resource will, according to the Huffington Post, citing the The New York Times, join other bottled-water brands like Fiji Water and Evian trying to eletrolytenmentcapitalize on the “ladies who lunch” demographic.

According to Resource’s group marketing manager, Larry Cooper, the ideal consumer of Resource water is “a woman who is a little more on the trendy side and higher-income side, and the bull’s-eye is 35 years old.” To promote the water’s status, the brand will be featured on “America’s Next Top Model” and endorsed by Bobbie Thomas on the “Today” show.

If we’re going to be subjected to absurd ad campaigns that feature interpretive dancer yogis, let’s have them for products that female consumers need and can afford. There’s nothing new about marketing high end, “healthy” food and drink to women. Treating them like they make the major purchasing decisions they do? That would be near revolutionary.

Can Shiga-toxin producing E. coli persist in water?

Posted on by
Reply

A toxin dangerous to humans may help E. coli fend off aquatic predators, enabling strains of E. coli that produce the toxin to survive longer in lake water than benign counterparts, a new study finds.

Researchers from the University at Buffalo and Mercyhurst University reported these results online June 7 in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

“The take-home lesson is that E. coli that produce Shiga toxin persisted longer in recreational water than E. coli that don’t produce this toxin,” said UB Professor of Biological Sciences Gerald Koudelka, PhD, who led the walkertonstudy. “This is because the toxin appears to help E. coli resist predation by bacterial grazers.”

The findings have implications for water quality testing. They suggest that measuring the overall population of E. coli in a river or lake — as many current tests do — may be a poor way to find out whether the water poses a danger to swimmers.

Past research has shown that overall E. coli concentrations don’t always correlate with the levels of dangerous, Shiga toxin-producing E. coli present in the water, Koudelka said. His new study provides one possible explanation for why this might be.

E. coli, short for Escherichia coli, is a bacteria found in human and animal intestines. Most types of E. coli are harmless. But those that produce Shiga toxin can make people very sick, causing symptoms such as hemorrhagic diarrhea. Severe cases can lead to death.

In their new study, Koudelka and his colleagues obtained water samples from Presque Isle State Park and Mill Creek Stream, both in northern Pennsylvania. The water contained protists — tiny, single-cellular creatures that feed on E. coli.

To test how Shiga toxin affects E. coli’s survival, the scientists placed several different strains of E. coli into the water samples: three strains of Shiga toxin-encoding E. coli (STEC), and three strains of E. coli that did not produce the toxin.

The results: The toxin producers fared much better against the grazing protists than their toxin-free counterparts. Over 24 hours, STEC populations fell by an average of 1.4-fold, in contrast to 2.5-fold for the Shiga-free bacteria.

The STEC strain that produced the most Shiga toxin also lasted the longest, persisting in water for about 48 hours before declining in numbers.

Each E. coli strain was tested in its own experiment (as opposed to one big experiment that included all six). All of the STEC strains studied were ones that had previously caused illness in humans.

The findings add to evidence suggesting that current water quality tests may not capture the whole story when it comes to E. coli danger in recreational waters, Koudelka said.

“If you’re only testing generally for fecal indicator bacteria, you could miss the danger because it’s possible to have low levels of E. coli overall, but have most of that E. coli be of the STEC variety,” he said. “This would be worse than having a large E. coli population but no STEC.”

The opposite problem can also occur, Koudelka said.

“You could have high E. coli populations in a lake, but absolutely no STEC,” he said. “This is the economic part of it: It’s a problem because you might have a beach that’s closed for days even though it’s safe.”

Water and fresh produce; does it matter?

Posted on by
1

Water is sortofa big thing in agriculture.

For the past 15 years I’ve had lively chats with growers of fresh produce about the quality of irrigation water. When the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak happened in two fistin wilsonWalkerton, Ontario, 13 years ago, those discussions became more heated.

My farmer friend Jeff wanted to know more and wanted to know what he could do because, as he said all those years ago, if a farmer has to choice between using potentially crap water or losing a crop, they’ll use the potentially crap water.

Things haven’t progressed much in the way of interventions, other than don’t bathe fresh produce in cow poop.

But under the Food Safety Modernization Act, growers in the Idaho-Eastern Oregon onion growing region, the nation’s largest in terms of volume, worry the rules will threaten their livelihood.

Growers say almost none of the surface water will meet the new standards.

And the science continues to be continuously vague.

Pahl et al reported in the Journal of Food Protection this month there was little correlation between indicator pathogens in water and indicator pathogens on tomatoes; maybe they didn’t stick.

Won et al reached similar conclusions in the same issue of JFP.

So how does this science feed into produce policy?

Comparing source of agricultural contact water and the presence of fecal indicator organisms on the surface of ‘juliet’ grape tomatoes

Journal of Food Protection,Number 6, June 2013, pp. 928-1108 , pp. 967-974(8)

Pahl, Donna M.; Telias, Adriana; Newell, Michael; Ottesen, Andrea R.; Walsh, Christopher S.http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iafp/jfp/2013/00000076/00000006/art00007

Abstract:

Consumption of fresh tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) has been implicated as the cause of several foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States, most notably in cases of salmonellosis. How the levels of fecal indicator organisms (FIOs) in water relate to the counts of these microorganisms on the tomato fruit surface is unknown, although microbial water quality standards exist for Onion Harvest2agricultural use. This study utilized four types of FIOs currently and historically used in microbial water quality standards (Enterobacteriaceae, total coliforms, fecal coliforms, and Escherichia coli) to monitor the water quality of two surface ponds and a groundwater source. The groundwater tested contained significantly lower counts of all FIOs than the two surface water sources (P < 0.05). Considerable variability in bacterial counts was found in the surface water sources over the course of the season, perhaps explained by environmental variables, such as water temperature, pH, precipitation, and air temperature (R2 of 0.13 to 0.27). We also monitored the fruit surface of grape tomatoes treated with overhead applications of the different water sources over the 2009 and 2010 growing seasons. The type of water source and time of year significantly affected the populations of FIOs in irrigation water (P < 0.05). Despite up to 5-log differences in fecal coliforms and 3-log differences in E. coli between the water sources, there was little difference in the populations measured in washes taken from tomato fruits. This lack of association between the aforementioned FIOs present in the water samples and on the tomato fruit surface demonstrates the difficulty in developing reliable metrics needed for testing of agricultural water to ensure the effectiveness of food safety programs.

Absence of direct association between coliforms and Escherichia coli in irrigation water and on produce

Journal of Food Protection, Number 6, June 2013, pp. 928-1108 , pp. 959-966(8)

Won, Gayeon; Schlegel, Pamela J.; Schrock, Jennifer M.; LeJeune, Jeffrey T.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iafp/jfp/2013/00000076/00000006/art00006

Abstract:

Irrigation water is considered a potential source of preharvest pathogen contamination of vegetables. Hence, several organizations have recommended microbiological standards for water used to irrigate edible plants. The purpose of this study was to determine the strength of association between microbial quality indicators (coliforms and Escherichia coli) in irrigation water and on irrigated vegetables. Data analyzed included original results from a cross-sectional study conducted in the Midwestern United States during summer 2009 and information presented in two previously published studies performed in France and Portugal to investigate microbial quality of irrigation water and watered produce. In the cross-sectional study, repetitive PCR (rep-PCR) was used to characterize genetic relatedness of E. coli isolates from water and vegetables. No significant correlations were found between fecal indicators on leafy greens (lettuce and parsley, n = 91) or fruit (tomatoes and green peppers, n = 22) and those found in irrigation water used in the cross-sectional study (P > 0.40) or in the previously published data sets (data set 1: lettuce and waste irrigation water, n = 15, P > 0.40; data set 2: lettuce and irrigation water, n = 32, P = 0.06). Rep-PCR banding patterns of E. coli strains were all distinguishable among the pairs of E. coli isolates recovered from produce and irrigation water on the same farm. From the available data, the concentration of indicator organisms based on a single measure of irrigation water quality was not associated with the presence of these indicators on produce. In the absence of additional information, the use of a single microbial water quality parameter as an indicator of produce safety is of limited value for predicting the safety of the produce.

Why I never buy coffee; upscale Hong Kong Starbucks gets water from toilet tap?

Posted on by
Reply

A Starbucks in the Bank of China Tower has been using water from a tap in a toilet to make beverages since its opening in October 2011.

USA Today reports that images from local newspaper Apple Daily showed the tap with a sign that said “Starbucks only” a few feet away from a urinal Toilet-Water-Coffee-in-Hong-Kong-Starbucks-Makes-Customers-Uneasyin the dingy washroom, which the paper said was in the building’s carpark.

“Starbucks, you need to make an open declaration that such crap is not repeated anywhere else, and fire the idiot who thought up such kind of water supply ‘solution,’ ” wrote one angry customer on Starbuck’s Hong Kong Facebook page.

In its response to the poster, the store apologized. “While the water used at that store was drinking water and certified as safe, we would like to clarify any misperceptions, as quality and safety have always been our top priority,” the store’s post said. “We are now using distilled water to serve that store while we work with all parties on acceptable options.”

Starbucks spokeswoman Wendy Pang told the AFP that the water was collected less than five times a day by staff from a tap in a toilet located near the store that was dedicated for collecting drinking water.

“There is no direct water supply to that particular store, that’s why we need to obtain the drinking water from the nearest source in the building,” Pang said.

The water from the toilet tap would go through a filtration system in the store ensuring it passed local and World Health Organization standards, Pang said.

Hong Kong University School of Public Health professor Benjamin Cowling told the AFP the worry is that pathogens from the restroom will end up in the Starbucks food preparation area.

“I wouldn’t go to the restaurant in the first place if I knew they were having potentially risky hygiene practices,” Cowling said.

13 sick; Cryptosporidium in Irish water supply again

Posted on by
Reply

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 south.park.diarrheabeen 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 by
Reply

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 the.departedfor 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 by
1

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 toilet-tmtoday.

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 by
Reply

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
toilet.waterand 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.