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Trendy “raw water” source under bird’s nest sparks diarrheal outbreak (arstechnica.com)
32 points by Brajeshwar on April 14, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 78 comments



My uncle does raw water off roof runoff much to my surprise. His response was never go sick so must be fine.

About a year later he ended up in hospital dangerously sick with a mystery something.

Pretty sure he went straight back to drinking it though


> raw water off roof runoff

Isn't that basically puddle water? Would he drink from a muddy water puddle after it rains? What's the logic here.


Probably something analogous to the 5 second rule: if it doesn't touch the ground, it's fine.

Water falling from the sky, even if you store it in clean rain barrels, still contains impurities and pollutants that the rain passes through. https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/private/rainwater-...


Probably worse depending on what type of roofing you have. Asphalt shingle debris sitting in water for an extended amount probably isn't putting anything good into it.


Most roofing systems are pretty inert.

I'd be more concerned about lead or rubber than asphalt (but still not really that concerned).


Don’t know the type but agreed can’t be particularly safe


Yep. I think it’s insane but he’s a grown adult

He’s after reducing eco footprint not health benefits though. Not that it matter for safety


It's not diarrhea it's a detox. Your just getting the bad stuff out of your body that's why it smells so bad.


I can't bring myself to fully believe that you're being sarcastic. It's just too real.


Is it wrong of me to think "evolution in action" here?


Not at all. If some of them adapt to contaminated water, they'll be more hydrated than the ones with bloody diarrhea, and pass their resistance to their descendants.


Given that humans haven't adapted 100% to "raw water" after millennia of evolution, the odds aren't really in their favor.


People who grow up with untreated water do in fact have resistance to the pathogens in it. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers%27_diarrhea


Yes, but it's not evolution. From that page-

> A study among expatriates in Nepal suggests that immunity may take up to seven years to develop—presumably in adults who avoid deliberate pathogen exposure.[18] Conversely, immunity acquired by American students while living in Mexico disappeared, in one study, as quickly as eight weeks after cessation of exposure.[19]

I suspect it's your gut flora that adapts; but it's not your DNA.


millenia is not very much time to be applying inductive reasoning about future odds.

absence of evidence is not evidence of absence


Millenia is however a bloody long time to have daily diarrhea. But I commend them for trying. Good luck.


The question is whether drinking contaminated water has a survival advantage. It could have one if clean water is so scarce to the point that you're more likely to die of thirst before reproductive age than of bacterial infection.


Why don't you go out and drink raw water for a while and report back after.


The basic idea behind the Darwin Awards.


We should really remove all warning labels, and let evolution pour a little bleach into the shallow end of the gene pool.

We’ve bubble-wrapped far too much of humanity, especially in western societies.

And while everyone is entitled to their own life (excepting some of the most egregious of murderers), what we are not entitled to is artificial insulation from the consequences of our actions and decisions.


2008 ass edgelord shit I've been reading this for decades and its never made any more sense. This pseudo-rational malicious superiority complex is such a weird affectation where do you all even learn this stuff is there like a school or. You are just openly and frankly advocating for more preventable harm and death this is not normal behavior.


You should have learned how and why we treat water several times in the course of science class and if you missed it anyone who hikes around the great outdoors who took the time to look up anything whatsoever would have been apt to find instructions on the danger of "raw water".

Furthermore these people aren't folks who wandered by and saw a water feature fit to slake their thirst they deliberately sought it out. They are emphatically so stupid it would actually be a shame if they had kids.

Nobody actually walks around pulling off warning labels and hoping people hurt themselves. People in general do as they did here and go to extensive efforts to keep said idiots from harming themselves, then turn around and live in a society that is worse off for having the idiots.

This is why people blow of steam by saying spiteful things on the internet. This is emphatically normal.


There are plenty of ways to source "raw water" safely from mountain springs. It's not strictly a bad idea like raw milk or something. But if you're below the treeline, there's a 100% chance you'll be drinking animal shit.


There are people who drink raw milk without any ill effects but certainly it's not recommended!


I read somewhere, all water on Earth has some form of pollution from human sources (plastic, chemicals and other things). It was a study I think by the UN or NOAA.


Surface water, perhaps. But the water from aquifer fed artesian wells is generally hundreds or thousands of years old.


Don't worry, we have been polluting plenty of aquifers too!


I don't understand why they turned the water source off. There was a sign saying it wasn't intended for drinking. If people insist on ignoring things and get sick, too bad.

If I go hiking I will sometimes drink from a stream or spring. I know there's a risk to this and I accept it. If I'm going to be out in nature for longer I'm more likely to use a filter like a lifestraw or boil water.


Treating those people cost money, in the long run probably more than rerouting the stream


If that's what free or socialized healthcare would make people feel entitled to make decisions on, I am not even sure if it is worth it. We don't even have it and the mindset may be leaking into second degree decisions like that.

I know you aren't suggesting it that way but your post made me ponder about it. If you socialize healthcare, you are automatically getting someone that says "oh no you don't, not on my dime, I'm gonna have to take care of you if something happens to you, no, no, no", which is practically a parent. It is probably a conversation that should be had. You rarely see it explored from that angle.


Healthcare costs are already socialized, even here in the United States. We call those costs "healthcare premiums." Why the majority of Americans don't recognize this simple fact is beyond me.


Medicare pays for about 2/3 of the nations healthcare costs. And that's totally a socialized payer system.


if it's hard to understand maybe there's a rage bait component at play, maybe the people who got sick aren't new-age health nuts but that were kids playing around that zone.


If it's flowing water there is no risk.


Hopefully you are joking because this is 100% false.


Okay then.

So what's the risk?


Just because the water isn't stagnant, doesn't mean there are no bacteria or viruses (or indeed parasites like giardia or something like that)... I had to drink water from a raw source once and I wouldn't have done it if I wasn't reasonably sure I would be back in civilization within the next day. I kept an eye out for adverse effects; fortunately that time was okay. But now I don't leave without a life straw at the least, which I bought immediately after that trip.


Yeah, that's entirely paranoia on your part.

Apart from anything else the water's going to be too cold for bacteria.


Freezing temps don’t kill a lot of harmful bacteria such as E. Coli


I mean, the article highlighted the risk.

Flowing water can still contain very harmful bacteria.


There are all kinds of pathogens that can live perfectly happily in flowing water.


Correction - if it's flowing water there is less risk than drinking from a stagnant pool of water. You should know there are plenty of rivers and streams, all flowing quite well thank you, that will make you sick should you be foolish enough to drink directly from them.


> Correction - if it's flowing water there is less risk than drinking from a stagnant pool of water.

That's what I've always thought, and it seems correct, but I'm not sure why that would be the case. Flowing water is more oxygenated which should make it easier for bacteria to survive, than in a still pool of water (getting baked by the sun's UV all day).


There is ZERO truth to this.


I have an interesting friend, with many interesting antics. They have a property with a clear creek running through it, and wanted to know if it had giardia. Assays are expensive, but metronidazole is cheap, so they drank the water, and determined shortly thereafter, it in fact had giardia.


I wouldn't call the only water source for these people trendy.


It's not the only source. In fact it was water coming out of a concrete box located on private property.

And the trendy part is that it's not isolated to this location or these people: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/dining/raw-water-unfilter...


Do you have a source for that claim?


And I thought drinking raw milk was needlessly dangerous.


It is however, delicious.


I respectfully disagree, but to each their own.

I love milk. But the first time I had it straight from the cow, it was... not what I expected.

I'll take mine filtered, homogenized and cooled down to refrigerator temperature please.


When I was a kid we used to drive out to a farm every Sunday to buy milk. We'd go early because us kids liked watching the cows.

Before bottling (in glass bottles that you had to bring back) the milk would drip over some cold rollers so it wasn't cow temperature by the time it got to the milk crate in the car. It spent the rest of the week in our refrigerator and after the first night all the bottles would be cream in the top 1/3 or so of the bottle and out of this world delicious milk in the rest.

After that farm closed it took me many years to not equate the taste of "normal" store bought milk to that of water.


Funny, I find the milk left after the cream has separated to just be kind of... watery and not flavorful. Because the fat is gone.

That's why I said homogenized -- I drink whole milk for both the flavor and the nutrition.

Also I'm in the US so I'm talking about store-bought milk you buy refrigerated and with an expiration date 10 days out. It's still quite "fresh".

Not UHT milk sold in much of the world that keeps for months unopened at room temperature. Which doesn't have the same flavor at all, although there has been some advancement there depending on the brand.

But of course, let me be clear -- at the end of the day there's no arguing with childhood memories. :) What's most valuable is the whole family experience!


Are you used to UHT milk?


If people could buy non-homogenized milk, the demand for raw milk would probably be significantly reduced.


You... can? If you want to make cheese at home, the first step is usually buying non-homogenized milk from the grocery.


In much of the US, non-homogenized milk is very rare.


Apparently so is antifreeze? (Exaggerating the possible health outcomes for effect - I'm aware they aren't comparable.)


Extrapolating from propylene glycol, it's definitely sweet but I would not call it delicious. On par with glycerin or corn syrup.


I was wondering about the wording as well, but this is the first article when I googled "is antifreeze sweet":

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/07/why-is-antifreez...

I wouldn't have thought so either, but apparently someone at slate likes it.


Wonder if these people who are afraid of fluoridated water have heard of toothpaste.


Have you paid attention to the toothpastes commercially available? A shocking number proudly claim to be fluoride free!


I've never known anyone that was against only the fluoride. There are a whole range of chemicals that you can find, in your local water quality reports. Many of which will be sitting at the safety limits, if it's anything like my city.

Related, my tap water kills my ferns. I have to used distilled/reverse osmosis water on them, which I also switched to after realizing this.


I've often wondered how "clean" water from a dehumidifier would be, since it's basically just distilled water.


Depends on what your dehumidifier and related equipment is.

On the other hand, distilled water isn't necessary to maintain the purity of your bodily fluids.


I grew up drinking water from a peaty spring a few hundred metres above my house.

Unless it's a bit chewy it just doesn't taste right to me.


A warm, damp environment is perfect for bacteria. But as long as you're not eating the plants it should be fine.


Could be the chlorine. With some of my plants, I used to decant water into an a pitcher and let it off-gas for a day or two and then use that to water the plants.


Decanted water is great for coffee too!


Never-mind toothpaste, I want to know if they drink tea?


Heck the well water I drank growing up was naturally fluorinated.


The Texas panhandle area?

We've all got fluoride stains. And the water tasted like crap because it was mixed with excessively saline water to reduce both the salt and fluoride levels to something reasonable.


That sounds gnarly. This was in Western New Hampshire


I'm not against fluoride in tap water but even I can recognize that there's a big difference between something that's in the water you drink vs something that's in your mouth for 2-3 minutes.


Sublingual drug administration is one of the most rapid uptake forms that exist. The list is basically:

- Intravenous

- Inhalation (for things easily aerosolized)

- Sublingual

- Everything else (including intramuscular and subcutaneous)

This is often the preferred route for oral medications that aren't too bitter for people, because it avoids stomach acids. So if the thought is that people don't want it in their bloodstream from ingestion, it's probably already there.

That doesn't even get into the concentrations. Standard water fluoride rates is on the rate of 1 ppm, whereas toothpaste is typically well over 1000 ppm. The amount of fluoride you swallow as a by-process of brushing your teeth would far outweigh what you drink in a day.


Flouride works by direct contact with the tooth. Drinking it, or sublingual uptake does little useful.


About the only thing it doesn't work for is insulin, which is a bit of a pity.


Exactly. It is already in toothpaste, so adulterating drinking water has a negligible health impact.

Water is an essential resource. We really shouldn't be messing with it. Just deliver it to the customer as pure as possible.




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