What happens if you swim in contaminated water? You’ll need paper and a toilet
Florida’s waterways have had a string of bad luck this year.
Poop on South Florida beaches. A two-week boil-water order in Fort Lauderdale. Flesh-eating bacteria along the Gulf coast.
Now, a nasty and smelly sewage spill has put Oleta River, Haulover and Greynolds parks in Northeast Miami-Dade under a precautionary “No Swim” advisory for sewage contamination.
This means you can’t do any recreational water activities, including swimming, fishing and boating until the experts test the water and give the all clear.
Why?
It’s because the contaminated water might send you to the bathroom for days.
If you swim in sewage-polluted water, you have a high chance of getting gastroenteritis, more commonly known as the stomach flu, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
While influenza ( the real flu) affects your nose, throat and lungs, gastroenteritis affects your intestines. Symptoms include watery diarrhea, nausea or vomiting, stomach cramps and dehydration, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Grossed out yet?
The intestinal infection is considered to be the most common illness associated with sewage-polluted water, according to the EPA.
If it also makes you think about the day you ate way too much chicken and then realized it was undercooked, it’s because gastroenteritis is also caused by food poisoning.
The Mayo Clinic says symptoms normally disappear after two days but could sometimes last for up to 10 days.
It’s not the only sewer-polluted water illness you can get from contaminated water in the United States. There’s at least a dozen more listed on the Indiana State Department of Health’s website. All can cause dehydration and could be dangerous to infants, young children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems.
Most have symptoms similar to the stomach flu such as campylobacteriosis (most common diarrheal illness) Cryptosporidiosis (most common waterborne disease known as “Crypto”) and Salmonellosis, which is caused by Salmonella.
Other sewer-polluted water diseases have additional risks such as Leptospirosis, which if left untreated can cause kidney damage, meningitis, liver failure, respiratory distress and in rare cases, death.
When it comes to recreational swimming-related illnesses — which are caused by sewage or other germs and chemicals in the water — the EPA says most of the illnesses don’t have long-term health effects.
But almost all of them will have you buying extra packs of toilet paper and camping out near your toilet.
To learn more about recreational water illnesses and how you can limit your exposure, visit cdc.gov
