Parasitic Food Poisoning
When food is improperly handled or prepared, it can pick up illness-causing bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Thankfully, parasites are a rare cause of food poisoning, yet they can cause long-lasting symptoms of illness. Two parasites that can be carried in food are giardia and crytopsoridium.
Giardiasis is an illness that causes diarrhea. The tiny protozoans have a tough outer shell which allows them to survive for months outside of a host. They are carried out of the body in the feces, and they can remain in water supplies. From here, when food crops such as fruit and vegetables are watered with giardia-infested liquid, they can become carriers for the parasite. Additionally, if crops are grown in soil that is contaminated with giardia, this too can cause the food to be tainted.
Thankfully, eating fully cooked food can prevent giardiasis. However, if you notice symptoms like diarrhea, gas, greasy and floating stool, abdominal cramps, and nausea, you may be infected with this parasite. Giardia can cause weight loss and dehydration also. The signs typically appear about a week after eating the tainted food, so it can be difficult to exactly pinpoint the source of your illness.
A doctor will usually ask for stool samples to look for signs of giardia if you believe that you are suffering from this parasite. There are some prescription drugs that can help you get over your infection, but otherwise, it can last up to six weeks.
Cryptosporidium is a parasite that also causes a diarrheal disease called cryptosporidiosis, sometimes shortened to crypto. Like giardia, cryptosporidia have protective outer shells that allow them to survive in tough environments. Cryptosporidia can even live through chlorine disinfection, which means that it can survive in drinking water. Once you consume water or eat food that has been prepared with crypto-infected water, the parasite can set up residence in your small intestines. From here, you may notice abdominal pain, malaise, weight loss, and nausea. However, crypto is characterized by the large amounts of watery diarrhea that you may have several times per day.
To diagnose this condition, you will typically have to submit several stool samples to a lab for analysis. If you find out that you do have crypto, there is no one medication that you can take to alleviate your sickness completely. Nonetheless, there are a few drugs that can help, such as nitazoxanide. However, the main thing that you must do is wait it out and keep your immune system healthy so that you can fight off the parasite on your own. This may last up to a month.
Restaurants and grocery stores should provide you with safe, parasite-free food. However, if they fail in this duty to you, you can be left ill for a long period of time. If you or someone you know has suffered from a food-borne parasite, you should consult a product liability attorney about your options. For more information, contact a San Antonio product liability lawyer from Stouwie & Mayo today.
By: Joseph Devine
About the Author:
Joseph Devine
Categories: Water Borne Illnesses Tags: Chlorine Disinfection, Giardiasis, Small Intestines
Iron Water Filters – not the Best for Filtering Drinking Water
Now I see that they have gotten around to trying to sell iron filters to residential customers.
The thing about these iron water filters is that they really don’t have much to offer you in the way of protection from the many contaminants that can be found in our water supply. They are too contaminant specific to offer you much help at all.
What these iron filters are primarily for is removing toxic heavy metals from your drinking water. They are highly recommended by some for their ability to effectively block iron, sulphur, manganese, sediment, and turbidity from your water, which is great.
However there are thousands of contaminants in our water supply that these types of filters are not equipped to deal with.
These iron water filters will do absolutely nothing to protect you from all of the chemical agents that are in our water supply.
There are about 2,100 of these chemicals in our water that are known to cause cancer in human beings. You need a filter that will effectively block these chemicals out. This is not the filter to do it with.
Another group of impurities that iron filters fail to deal with are the numerous parasites and cysts that breed in our water.
These microscopic menaces will many times survive the chlorine disinfection process, and will make anyone who is unlucky enough to ingest them severely ill. This illness can often be fatal in the elderly, and in small children.
Iron water filters are too limited in what they can offer you, and at a starting price of around $400, they should be able to offer you much more.
If you want to be able to remove heavy metals from your drinking water there is a much more affordable way in which to not only accomplish that task, but also get help with the other contaminants also.
Instead of iron filters what you need is an all around water purification unit that features an ion exchange filter.
This filter removes metals from you water just as effectively as those other types of filters do.But the reason that they are named as they are is because when they trap these metal traces, they release sodium and potassium in its place.
What iron water filters don’t offer you is the protection that can be had by the combination of an activated granular carbon filter, a multi media block, and a sub micron filter.
These three filters will effectively block 99% of all of the chemical and microbial contaminants that are currently present in your water. This combination is what you need if you want to feel totally safe.
You can buy the top rated counter top unit for a mere $125 dollars, which as we have learned is considerably less expensive than any of the iron filters that are available.
This unit contains all four of the filters that have been mentioned, and with all of this protection in your counter top, your family can rest easy at night knowing that nothing can harm them.
Real Estate Investments
Categories: Water Filters Tags: Chlorine Disinfection, Cysts, Water Purification
