Summer is here and sooner or later many of us will use it to splash around in the municipal swimming pool or use the water attractions at our vacation spot. With a lot of humor, Ars Technica uses the opportunity to take stock of the composition of the water in which you are about to splash. And all with reference to official cross-prevention campaigns in the United States, some of which are particularly perceptive.
(pooh)
On the side of the State of Virginia, we try first to remain dignified before changing our minds in extreme cases. A graphic used by the Federal Public Health Agency states, “Chlorine doesn’t work right away — some germs can survive in swimming pools for days.” Don’t drink the water you’re swimming in or swim in a pool where someone has had an accident had (feces).
Yes, “caca” or at least “poop” in the original version. For why should one say things in a roundabout way?
We’re just bunches of germs
The CDC government website has a section devoted to “swimming pools and health,” but it’s fair to say that the numbers, especially, make you want to never swim again. For example, one of the infographics available tells us what “the germs and dirt are that the average swimmer brings with them into the water.”
The list is a bit of an appetite suppressant. “Hair, 10 million microbes. Saliva, 8 million microbes in a single drop. Hands, 5 million germs. phew [oui, encore, ndlr]140 billion microbes.” The list runs for several lines before ending with this particularly traumatic piece of information: “Sweat, 1 or 2 cans of soda.” This harks back to a particularly powerful episode in the Jackass series, in which the heroes in set their heads to drink the sweat of one of their comrades.
diarrhea slide
Also, Ars Technica has unearthed an animated diarrhea-themed image on the CDC website, no doubt intended to promote the section of its website dedicated to this sensitive subject. We’re told it takes just one person with diarrhea to contaminate an entire swimming pool, illustrated by a stunning image of a little girl sliding down a water slide with a long brown streak behind her.
On the same page there is also a prevention poster showing us a swimmer’s head sticking out of a toilet, then a family splashing in the brown-stained water with the message: ‘You wouldn’t do that, so why should you do that?” THAT?” One wonders what magic keeps us alive despite all the years we’ve spent in infamous culture broths.