I noticed that as a group we get a little hung up about drinking from streams… To filter or not to filter is that the question… then the questions get focused on Giardiasis – but clearly we forget about Campylobacteriosis, E. coli Infection, Dysentery, Cyclosporiasis and the two biggies Cholera, Typhoid fever. Well there’s something we haven’t discussed. After watching several survival shows they are all about boiling water. Those on the reality show, that don’t filter or boil, quickly fail in about 4-5 days and get rushed to the hospital. And the complete list of symptoms is even more disturbing, some of it is fatal. WIKI
If in Mexico, Don’t order ice in your drink? Remember that old one? Would it shock you several restaurants in my Philadelphia area are still on a well and one of them locally tests positive from time to time with E Coli in the ice? The drain field is too close to the well. So why can some of us drink from the streams and others languish in their sleeping bags for a few days with flu like symptoms? Why did American Indians avoid Beaver fever? Well they didn’t – they from time to time got sick too. Before the time of early American settlers digging wells in Philadelphia and farmers excavating springs for spring houses, in the depths of Pennsylvania there was the American Indian, and I chose this as the Lenape Indians covered the most of the northern part of the Government Trail, later named the AT. Before the walking purchase they did suffer from fevers, but from repeated exposures while growing up gave them some immunity, and turned them into carriers.
If in Mexico, Don’t order ice in your drink? Remember that old one? Would it shock you several restaurants in my Philadelphia area are still on a well and one of them locally tests positive from time to time with E Coli in the ice? The drain field is too close to the well. So why can some of us drink from the streams and others languish in their sleeping bags for a few days with flu like symptoms? Why did American Indians avoid Beaver fever? Well they didn’t – they from time to time got sick too. Before the time of early American settlers digging wells in Philadelphia and farmers excavating springs for spring houses, in the depths of Pennsylvania there was the American Indian, and I chose this as the Lenape Indians covered the most of the northern part of the Government Trail, later named the AT. Before the walking purchase they did suffer from fevers, but from repeated exposures while growing up gave them some immunity, and turned them into carriers.
- 7% of today’s Americans are carriers and the percentage is several times higher for outdoors people, children, and the world population in general.· It's easily spread.
- Combine poor hygiene with the fact that a million Giardia organisms can hitch a ride under a single fingernail, and in no time your camp will be doing the Beaver Fever Quickstep.·
- It's persistent. Cysts can live several months outside the body.
Be wise enough to walk away from the nonsense around you!