Wednesday July 18, 2007, 5:56 pm
I wasn't sure if I should put this under Health & wellness, Enviorment or what.

Don't go swimming in Galvestion!! Please note....they don't tell you exactly where he swam....making it impossible to protect other people.

Thursday July 19, 2007, 8:31 am
At present, immunocompromised individuals and those with open woulds are most vulnerable. Most cases are at present contracted from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, in several states of the US. the problem is far more widespread than Galveston.

Thursday July 19, 2007, 8:37 am
Thanks for the extra info! I wasn't sure how bad the water was there....if it was a special case...or not.
Either way....Our waters are in bad shape...

Thursday July 19, 2007, 11:23 am
And the Bu$h administration would have you believe that all the debris, rotting bodies, garbage, run-off, from the Katrina disaster, has nothing to do with "pollution" ...

Oxygen-Depleted 'Dead Zone' Growing in Gulf NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Researchers predict that the recurring oxygen-depleted "dead zone" off the Louisiana coast will grow this summer to 8,543 square miles -- its largest in at least 22 years.

Thursday July 19, 2007, 11:28 am
Bush admin....ACK! How could anyone in their right mind believe him! LOL Thanks for the link Blue!

Thursday July 19, 2007, 2:26 pm
Frightening! I had no idea this was caused by Strep bacteria... So don't go swimming with cuts, and don't let a person with strep cough on your cuts...

Thursday July 19, 2007, 2:54 pm
The important thing is taht the victim is a diabetic with a wound which gave the bacteria an in. Indication could be that this would also cause a similar result to a non diabetic but wouldn't put money onit.
This bacteria is not a strep. AS it says in the article necrotizing fasciitis caused by bacteria known as Vibrio vulnificus.
There is no indication that there is a link between the high BOD in the article about the golf of Mexico and this particular bacteria. If tehre are bodies in the water this bacteria would be happy. That is something else again. Holly T

Thursday July 19, 2007, 6:51 pm
Holly, that's not the only important thing; a child could get scratched at the beach by a razor clam or a broken shell and have a cut or open abrasion, scrape from being tossed by the waves in the sand while wading in the surf ... if the bacteria are present and there is an open cut, wound, abrasion, scratch, compromised immune system ... the federal/state/city officials are not warning the public about this danger to their health!!!

Friday July 20, 2007, 8:55 am
Vibrio is cholera-related. If you drink this organism, you get some similar symptoms.

It is related to fecal pollution. this means that the usual problems of sewage and the usual human sewage treatment methods that dump primary, secondary, or tertiary treated sewage into water is a basis.

Cases have occurred in Alabama, and other Gulf states, as I mentioned above.
Compost toilets have been used by organically-minded farmers and others for many many years. Any problematic organisms are not released into water. Sewage release, and overpopulation are the main roots of such problems as this.
The amazing number of water-borne parasites in Africa are a result of long-term human life (and wrongful use of waterways as sewers, etc. See next paragraph) there. In North America, the freshwater problems of giardia lamblia and other parasites, are of VERY recent origin in most places (yes, I know all about "beaver fever", so if you have anything substantive to say, go ahead, but otherwise please resist the usual practice of posting ignorance and false information common all over the web), due to human proliferation and use of waterways and open waters for sewers.
To show how ignorant humans have been in hygiene, spas in Pennsylvania operated in the 1800s and before, with foul-smelling muds regarded as therapeutic. Upon tracing the sources, it was found that they flowed from untreated sewage in a nearby city. Some indigenous peoples of North America recognized that streams were sacrosanct, and could not believe how EuroAmericans treated their waters. These were nonliterate societies encountering people with the same attitudes as the present culture.
Strange religious practices pretending that dead bodies were somehow so worthy of reverence (instead of better left as carrion) as to be placed in rivers or other waters, were at fault elsewhere. This only worked when the populations were relatively extremely small.
If you have lived in areas where good predators and carrion eaters still existed, you would notice that there is very little waste in the natural world as it was. It did not stink, like areas cleared of major predators do, with the decomposing bodies of bambis and other prey species. Here is an island with no predator larger than a fox, and some turkey vultures. With some revent poaching-for-fun done by drunken white men, a mass of bullet-riddled deer bodies stunk up the place for a month. While in another place I frequent, the bear, wild cat species, and some other animals that take care of such things remove dead deer within 1 to three days. No stink.
This is why we NEED wolves, big bears, unshot eagles and vultures/condors, and other animals shot at for "sport."

Since staph is endemic in San Diego and Oahu urban waters (at least since the 60s), it too, is a problem waiting to explode. The sores of surfers and beachgoers that erupt into craters are from staphylococci in the blood/circulatory system.
Swimmer's itch can be staph or other mild flesheating organisms, and sometimes in tropics, can mean schistosomes (check these out. Expect them to increase.)

Hookworm, which enters through bare feet on the beaches of Sri Lanka (and certainly elsewhere) from human defecation there is another delightful parasite. MANY more await, always where populations are high, and not always in warm or subtropical areas.

Friday July 20, 2007, 2:56 pm
Mother Earth is protecting itself.When the water temperature rises in the Ocean, there is an immune system response of our planet to rid itself of parasites, until the number falls to an acceptable level.

Friday July 20, 2007, 4:47 pm
Poor man. They should have signs saying if you have any wounds on your body, not to go into the water. He had a ulcer on his leg that wasn't quite healed and he was diabetic and vulnerable to infection. There are common antibiotics that will treat Vibrio vulnificus if diagnosed early. People who are immuno-compromised are at high risk of becoming infection from this organism which is commonly found in sea water. People who eat raw sea food and also have immune problem can become infected, too. Here is a link to read about it: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/vibriovulnificus_g.htm