Imagine walking over to your kitchen faucet. You drink down a whole glass full of refreshing water and find out a few days later that you may be ill. Ill because your water source was contaminated. Being a spoiled, water-drinking person from the United States, I take drinking water for granted. However, it takes an enormous amount of money to keep our drinking water safe.
In the Kirksville Daily Express & News (Saturday, Aug. 2, 1998; Kirksville, Missouri, United States) I read a story from the Associated Press (AP) that Sydney Australia's population of 3 million was drinking water contaminated with two parasites. Go to the CNN version if you like. It has a really cool image of Giardia lamblia from the AP.
Giardia intestinalis (used to be called Giardia lamblia) and Cryptosporidium parvum apparently got into the water due to a breakdown of a filtration plant. Chlorination does not kill these parasites. Therefore, they must be filtered out of the water.
Fortunately the filtration plant has been fixed and the water department is starting to flush out the contaminated water lines. However, within a week or two many people could get ill. Giardia lamblia is a parasite that when consumed lives in our small intestines causing excessive bloating, abdominal cramps, a lot of gas, clay-colored stools, and diarrhea. There is a treatment for this infection.
Cryptosporidium parvum also dwells in our intestines. Usually people don't have any problems with this organism but some people will have flu-like symptoms and a mild diarrhea. People with weaker immune systems, however, can have very serious diarrhea. Some people have died from this infection. Unfortunately, there is no good treatment for this infection. In 1993 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, had the same problem with a filtration plant and Cryptosporidium parvum sickened 400,000 and killed around 100 people.
To maintain the safety of our water requires a lot of money. So remember the next time the water department asks for a raise in the water rates that a safe drink of water is cheaper than one full of those nasty microbes.
If you are from Syndey, Australia, and want more information or if you
drink water and want to know more about these parasites and how they get
in the water, go to the following sites.
- Parasites and Parasitological Resources: Giardia
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