Now that everybody knows I was on vacation, I want to talk about something that actually happened while on vacation.
It was just after supper and the gang (9 people, ((yes I consider kids beween the age of 3 to 11 as people)),) decided to go for a swim at the local public beach. Most of us went for the swim but my wife decided to sit on the beach and watch.
During this time my wife met a lady on the beach and they started to talk.
Part of the conversation was about a storm that had recently passed and the damage that it left. The other part of the conversation was about that day was the first day the beach was open because it had acceptable ecoli (spelling?) levels.
I am naturally a doomsday profit and after hearing this I had a lot of questions.
What is the difference to the human body between the maximum allowable levels of bacteria and the minimum non-allowable levels?
Where did the bacteria from the previous day go?
Are the levels allowable for adults compared to kids different?
WILL I LIVE?
Needless to say the following day I got smart and insisted that we as a gang go swimming on the other side of the bay about a 1/4 mile from the day before beach!!!!
bayl
5 comments:
Hmmm, I think the cutoff point is always way in the safe zone. Of course, none of this applies to places where the water testers are in Walkerton mode.
As a child, I grew up in the Beach area of Toronto where I swam in Lake Ontario every day, pretty much from the end of May til the beginning of September. Back in those days, they were testing the water for E coli and other bacteria about 100 metres out. Not so bright. They might have thought about testing the water where people were actually swimming, water that was essentially a sewage cesspool despite the signs telling us it was OK to swim. Here's what happened to me: on a trip to California with my mother one summer, I suddenly developed an earache. By the time we made it up the Pacific northwest coast to Vancouver, I was almost ready to chainsaw my own head off. I was rushed to emergency in Vancouver where a number of ear, nose and throat specialists looked down into my bleeding, oozing ear and literally, to a man, leapt back in horror. They consulted with other doctors at various hospitals in North America and it was determined I had some kind of horrific water-borne bacteria that had set up a shopping centre in my ear. I had to go on major antibiotics and have a wick down my ear for six months, and couldn't hear out of it very well.
The moral of this story: Don't go swimming in water where they are telling you upfront that this stuff is in the water, just not today.
p.s. I'm bacccccck!!
Bah. A little bacteria is nothing. Why, we go swimming in the Slough all the time, and no one tests that water for bacteria.
Though the last time we went swimming my friend got a nasty rash....
Alberta, I thought this was a sex free site?
If you want to talk rashes though I'm in.jp
Hmmm, they just had some guy on the radio saying don't swim in water that gets closed down for e-coli even if it's supposedly acceptable when you're there.
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