More than once at rowing training our crew’s been told off for - however inadvertently - putting our hands or feet in the water. This is the Isis, which, however distantly, is part of the Thames. We’ve always found it a bit funny, as during a bumps race - unless you’re really good, and we’re not - you inevitably get saturated as coxes manoeuvre their respective boats, blades flick water everywhere and people generally attempt to do some damage.
The risk, apparently, comes from Weil’s Disease, which is transmitted - here’s the yuck factor - in rat’s piss. It survives for a long time in fresh or tidal water, and is potentially fatal. Mind you, I suspect there’s lots of other nasties lurking in the Isis, although I’ve got no idea how nasty they are.
All these warnings about winding up in the water made me start thinking about the voices of doom one often hears about pharmaceuticals - particularly hormones - in the water, and how they’re supposed to be causing everything from male infertility to bigger boobs in women (be nice if it were true, natch). Other people who know a great deal more than me are onto the issue as well, and for that reason I recommend the most recent Skepticality Podcast:
Last week, a widely circulated Associated Press story reported that ‘a vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans.’
Derek and Swoopy look beyond the headline hype in their interview with Dr. Shane Snyder, who published his first study on ‘Screening of Drinking Water for Possible Endocrine Disrupting Compounds’ over ten years ago.
As a doctor of Environmental Toxicology and Zoology, Dr. Snyder has devoted most of his career to studying the evidence of chemical, environmental and pharmaceutical compounds in the water supply—and what harm, if any, it poses to the organisms that utilize it.
9 Comments
Hey have our skeptics sussed it out that global warming is a racket yet?
Because Ian Plimer made a presentation to them and they didn’t believe him THEN!!!
But you would have thought they would have sussed it out by now.
Its like everyone is triangulating these days. Like maybe you’d join the skeptics for phoney street cred and to give you a license to believe any damn rubbish you like.
You turn my water post into an AGW thread, Graeme, and I’m gonna get medieval on your ass!
BTW, do you never sleep?
They haven’t have they. Not the authentic skeptics they make themselves out to be.
I’m gonna get medieval on your ass!
You’re going to need some large ordinance for that job. I suggest one of these. Extra large.
SkepticLawyer:
Bloody hell! Thought England was too cold for a “tropical” disease like leptospirosis [Weil's Disease]; the disease that caused the Aust. sugar cane crops to be burnt off prior to cutting [harvest] so as to protect the cane-cutters.
The enthusiam in Aust. for household rainwater tanks might wane slightly if a thorough analysis was made of the rainwater in such tanks across the country.
What’s in English tapwater these days sound like enough to get the Temperance Society banned.
They burnt the cane for other reasons, too, though - it chased snakes out, and stopped the cutters getting tropical sores. Weil’s is quite a problem over here. Before coming to the UK, I’d not heard of it still being around. My dad (who cut cane when he first migrated to Oz) mentioned it, but always in the past tense - ie well before I was born.
SkepticLawyer:
…. And in one case, to find a tractor that had been left in a paddock several months before
No, that was the result of a cane-fire, not a reason it was done [true story though]. You are right about getting rid of the very deadly snakes.
Wonder if any competitors in the Olympics. on returning a positive drugs test, can claim “No, I didn’t take any drugs …. though I did drink the water in London.” ??
Do they still throw the cox of the winning boat into the water?
Only during Summer VIIIs. It’s too cold during Torpids.