Things I Don't Have to Know

I always tell the students I teach that one of the objects of life should be to learn as much as possible about everything. But then, every once in a while, I learn something that I think my life would be better without.

The story began with an article I found about the critter on the right. Naegleria fowleri, an amoeba-like protist that lives in the muck at the bottom of warm fresh water ponds and streams in the southern US. It generally causes no trouble, feeding primarily on bacteria. However, every year, two or three unfortunate souls get these things up their nose from where they travel into the brain and eat enough brain cells to kill their victim. Now, two or three deaths per year is not much. Lightning kills over 50 per year in the US, and for those who worry about things, wearing a nose clip reduces your chances to zero.

In following up on this information, I learned several things. 1. The critter is not really an amoeba, but more closely related to the euglena (remember him from HS Biology?).  2. The entire biological classification system is being changed again. Bye-bye Linnaeus, hello biochemical and genetic analysis. (but that is a story for another day).  and 3. The more likely human parasites in water, E coli, Giardia, Shigella, Cryptosporidium, Endamoeba, are spread through fecal contamination. Then I found what I don't need to know

"Swimmers share the water — and the germs in it — with every person who enters the pool. On average, people have about 0.14 grams of feces on their bottoms which, when rinsed off, can contaminate recreational water. In addition, when someone is ill with diarrhea, their stool can contain millions of germs. This means that just one person with diarrhea can easily contaminate the water in a large pool or water park."  (credit to The Artful Amoeba, a Scientific American blog)


Of course, my first thought on reading this was, Who did the study?, How did they do it?, and WHY?   I would like to think of my Butt as being pristine but I will never trust the guy next to me in the pool ever again. I may have to reserve my swimming to the ocean where the jellyfish and the sharks are at least visible.